Bug 2363348 (CVE-2025-23145)

Summary: CVE-2025-23145 kernel: mptcp: fix NULL pointer in can_accept_new_subflow
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedCC: dfreiber, drow, jburrell, vkumar
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2025-05-01 14:04:46 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

mptcp: fix NULL pointer in can_accept_new_subflow

When testing valkey benchmark tool with MPTCP, the kernel panics in
'mptcp_can_accept_new_subflow' because subflow_req->msk is NULL.

Call trace:

  mptcp_can_accept_new_subflow (./net/mptcp/subflow.c:63 (discriminator 4)) (P)
  subflow_syn_recv_sock (./net/mptcp/subflow.c:854)
  tcp_check_req (./net/ipv4/tcp_minisocks.c:863)
  tcp_v4_rcv (./net/ipv4/tcp_ipv4.c:2268)
  ip_protocol_deliver_rcu (./net/ipv4/ip_input.c:207)
  ip_local_deliver_finish (./net/ipv4/ip_input.c:234)
  ip_local_deliver (./net/ipv4/ip_input.c:254)
  ip_rcv_finish (./net/ipv4/ip_input.c:449)
  ...

According to the debug log, the same req received two SYN-ACK in a very
short time, very likely because the client retransmits the syn ack due
to multiple reasons.

Even if the packets are transmitted with a relevant time interval, they
can be processed by the server on different CPUs concurrently). The
'subflow_req->msk' ownership is transferred to the subflow the first,
and there will be a risk of a null pointer dereference here.

This patch fixes this issue by moving the 'subflow_req->msk' under the
`own_req == true` conditional.

Note that the !msk check in subflow_hmac_valid() can be dropped, because
the same check already exists under the own_req mpj branch where the
code has been moved to.

Comment 1 Avinash Hanwate 2025-05-02 05:46:59 UTC
Upstream advisory:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/2025050126-CVE-2025-23145-4a18@gregkh/T