Bug 2418876 (CVE-2025-40258)

Summary: CVE-2025-40258 kernel: mptcp: fix race condition in mptcp_schedule_work()
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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Doc Text:
A race in mptcp_schedule_work() could lead to a use-after-free: the function queued work and only then acquired a reference to the socket. If the worker ran to completion immediately, the subsequent sock_hold() operated on a freed object. Impact ranges from kernel crash (DoS) to potential privilege escalation for a local user able to create MPTCP sockets.
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2025-12-04 17:02:29 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

mptcp: fix race condition in mptcp_schedule_work()

syzbot reported use-after-free in mptcp_schedule_work() [1]

Issue here is that mptcp_schedule_work() schedules a work,
then gets a refcount on sk->sk_refcnt if the work was scheduled.
This refcount will be released by mptcp_worker().

[A] if (schedule_work(...)) {
[B]     sock_hold(sk);
        return true;
    }

Problem is that mptcp_worker() can run immediately and complete before [B]

We need instead :

    sock_hold(sk);
    if (schedule_work(...))
        return true;
    sock_put(sk);

[1]
refcount_t: addition on 0; use-after-free.
 WARNING: CPU: 1 PID: 29 at lib/refcount.c:25 refcount_warn_saturate+0xfa/0x1d0 lib/refcount.c:25
Call Trace:
 <TASK>
 __refcount_add include/linux/refcount.h:-1 [inline]
  __refcount_inc include/linux/refcount.h:366 [inline]
  refcount_inc include/linux/refcount.h:383 [inline]
  sock_hold include/net/sock.h:816 [inline]
  mptcp_schedule_work+0x164/0x1a0 net/mptcp/protocol.c:943
  mptcp_tout_timer+0x21/0xa0 net/mptcp/protocol.c:2316
  call_timer_fn+0x17e/0x5f0 kernel/time/timer.c:1747
  expire_timers kernel/time/timer.c:1798 [inline]
  __run_timers kernel/time/timer.c:2372 [inline]
  __run_timer_base+0x648/0x970 kernel/time/timer.c:2384
  run_timer_base kernel/time/timer.c:2393 [inline]
  run_timer_softirq+0xb7/0x180 kernel/time/timer.c:2403
  handle_softirqs+0x22f/0x710 kernel/softirq.c:622
  __do_softirq kernel/softirq.c:656 [inline]
  run_ktimerd+0xcf/0x190 kernel/softirq.c:1138
  smpboot_thread_fn+0x542/0xa60 kernel/smpboot.c:160
  kthread+0x711/0x8a0 kernel/kthread.c:463
  ret_from_fork+0x4bc/0x870 arch/x86/kernel/process.c:158
  ret_from_fork_asm+0x1a/0x30 arch/x86/entry/entry_64.S:245