Bug 2402216 (CVE-2023-53665)

Summary: CVE-2023-53665 kernel: md: don't dereference mddev after export_rdev()
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: unspecifiedKeywords: Security
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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A use-after-free vulnerability was found in the Linux kernel multiple device RAID subsystem's device lifetime management. A local user with privileges to manage MD arrays can trigger concurrent device addition and removal operations via sysfs, causing a race condition where the mddev structure is freed when the last rdev is removed but then dereferenced afterward, which leads to memory corruption and can result in denial of service via kernel crash or potentially privilege escalation through heap manipulation.
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2025-10-07 16:03:29 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

md: don't dereference mddev after export_rdev()

Except for initial reference, mddev->kobject is referenced by
rdev->kobject, and if the last rdev is freed, there is no guarantee that
mddev is still valid. Hence mddev should not be used anymore after
export_rdev().

This problem can be triggered by following test for mdadm at very
low rate:

New file: mdadm/tests/23rdev-lifetime

devname=${dev0##*/}
devt=`cat /sys/block/$devname/dev`
pid=""
runtime=2

clean_up_test() {
        pill -9 $pid
        echo clear > /sys/block/md0/md/array_state
}

trap 'clean_up_test' EXIT

add_by_sysfs() {
        while true; do
                echo $devt > /sys/block/md0/md/new_dev
        done
}

remove_by_sysfs(){
        while true; do
                echo remove > /sys/block/md0/md/dev-${devname}/state
        done
}

echo md0 > /sys/module/md_mod/parameters/new_array || die "create md0 failed"

add_by_sysfs &
pid="$pid $!"

remove_by_sysfs &
pid="$pid $!"

sleep $runtime
exit 0

Test cmd:

./test --save-logs --logdir=/tmp/ --keep-going --dev=loop --tests=23rdev-lifetime

Test result:

general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0x6b6b6b6b6b6b6bcb: 0000 [#4] PREEMPT SMP
CPU: 0 PID: 1292 Comm: test Tainted: G      D W          6.5.0-rc2-00121-g01e55c376936 #562
RIP: 0010:md_wakeup_thread+0x9e/0x320 [md_mod]
Call Trace:
 <TASK>
 mddev_unlock+0x1b6/0x310 [md_mod]
 rdev_attr_store+0xec/0x190 [md_mod]
 sysfs_kf_write+0x52/0x70
 kernfs_fop_write_iter+0x19a/0x2a0
 vfs_write+0x3b5/0x770
 ksys_write+0x74/0x150
 __x64_sys_write+0x22/0x30
 do_syscall_64+0x40/0x90
 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x63/0xcd

Fix this problem by don't dereference mddev after export_rdev().