Bug 2367580 (CVE-2025-37953)

Summary: CVE-2025-37953 kernel: Linux kernel: sch_htb NULL pointer dereference
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
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's Hierarchical Token Bucket (sch_htb) scheduler. This vulnerability allows a local attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) via a NULL pointer dereference in the htb_next_rb_node() function due to htb_deactivate() not being idempotent.
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2025-05-20 17:01:51 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

sch_htb: make htb_deactivate() idempotent

Alan reported a NULL pointer dereference in htb_next_rb_node()
after we made htb_qlen_notify() idempotent.

It turns out in the following case it introduced some regression:

htb_dequeue_tree():
  |-> fq_codel_dequeue()
    |-> qdisc_tree_reduce_backlog()
      |-> htb_qlen_notify()
        |-> htb_deactivate()
  |-> htb_next_rb_node()
  |-> htb_deactivate()

For htb_next_rb_node(), after calling the 1st htb_deactivate(), the
clprio[prio]->ptr could be already set to  NULL, which means
htb_next_rb_node() is vulnerable here.

For htb_deactivate(), although we checked qlen before calling it, in
case of qlen==0 after qdisc_tree_reduce_backlog(), we may call it again
which triggers the warning inside.

To fix the issues here, we need to:

1) Make htb_deactivate() idempotent, that is, simply return if we
   already call it before.
2) Make htb_next_rb_node() safe against ptr==NULL.

Many thanks to Alan for testing and for the reproducer.

Comment 1 Avinash Hanwate 2025-05-21 06:34:00 UTC
Upstream advisory:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/2025052001-CVE-2025-37953-d825@gregkh/T