Bug 2348124 (CVE-2022-49675)

Summary: CVE-2022-49675 kernel: tick/nohz: unexport __init-annotated tick_nohz_full_setup()
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
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Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedCC: dfreiber, drow, jburrell, vkumar
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2025-02-26 03:18:27 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

tick/nohz: unexport __init-annotated tick_nohz_full_setup()

EXPORT_SYMBOL and __init is a bad combination because the .init.text
section is freed up after the initialization. Hence, modules cannot
use symbols annotated __init. The access to a freed symbol may end up
with kernel panic.

modpost used to detect it, but it had been broken for a decade.

Commit 28438794aba4 ("modpost: fix section mismatch check for exported
init/exit sections") fixed it so modpost started to warn it again, then
this showed up:

    MODPOST vmlinux.symvers
  WARNING: modpost: vmlinux.o(___ksymtab_gpl+tick_nohz_full_setup+0x0): Section mismatch in reference from the variable __ksymtab_tick_nohz_full_setup to the function .init.text:tick_nohz_full_setup()
  The symbol tick_nohz_full_setup is exported and annotated __init
  Fix this by removing the __init annotation of tick_nohz_full_setup or drop the export.

Drop the export because tick_nohz_full_setup() is only called from the
built-in code in kernel/sched/isolation.c.

Comment 3 Avinash Hanwate 2025-02-27 17:38:22 UTC
Upstream advisory:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/2025022624-CVE-2022-49675-17aa@gregkh/T