Bug 2419903 (CVE-2023-53747)

Summary: CVE-2023-53747 kernel: Linux kernel: Denial of Service via use-after-free in vc_screen
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: rhel-process-autobot, watson-tool-maintainers
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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Doc Text:
A flaw was found in the Linux kernel. A local user can exploit a use-after-free (UAF) vulnerability in the `vc_screen` component. This occurs because a pointer to the `vc_data` structure is not reloaded after a console unlock operation, leading to the use of freed memory. Successful exploitation of this flaw can result in a denial of service, making the system unavailable.
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description OSIDB Bzimport 2025-12-08 07:07:30 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

vc_screen: reload load of struct vc_data pointer in vcs_write() to avoid UAF

After a call to console_unlock() in vcs_write() the vc_data struct can be
freed by vc_port_destruct(). Because of that, the struct vc_data pointer
must be reloaded in the while loop in vcs_write() after console_lock() to
avoid a UAF when vcs_size() is called.

Syzkaller reported a UAF in vcs_size().

BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in vcs_size (drivers/tty/vt/vc_screen.c:215)
Read of size 4 at addr ffff8880beab89a8 by task repro_vcs_size/4119

Call Trace:
 <TASK>
__asan_report_load4_noabort (mm/kasan/report_generic.c:380)
vcs_size (drivers/tty/vt/vc_screen.c:215)
vcs_write (drivers/tty/vt/vc_screen.c:664)
vfs_write (fs/read_write.c:582 fs/read_write.c:564)
...
 <TASK>

Allocated by task 1213:
kmalloc_trace (mm/slab_common.c:1064)
vc_allocate (./include/linux/slab.h:559 ./include/linux/slab.h:680
    drivers/tty/vt/vt.c:1078 drivers/tty/vt/vt.c:1058)
con_install (drivers/tty/vt/vt.c:3334)
tty_init_dev (drivers/tty/tty_io.c:1303 drivers/tty/tty_io.c:1415
    drivers/tty/tty_io.c:1392)
tty_open (drivers/tty/tty_io.c:2082 drivers/tty/tty_io.c:2128)
chrdev_open (fs/char_dev.c:415)
do_dentry_open (fs/open.c:921)
vfs_open (fs/open.c:1052)
...

Freed by task 4116:
kfree (mm/slab_common.c:1016)
vc_port_destruct (drivers/tty/vt/vt.c:1044)
tty_port_destructor (drivers/tty/tty_port.c:296)
tty_port_put (drivers/tty/tty_port.c:312)
vt_disallocate_all (drivers/tty/vt/vt_ioctl.c:662 (discriminator 2))
vt_ioctl (drivers/tty/vt/vt_ioctl.c:903)
tty_ioctl (drivers/tty/tty_io.c:2778)
...

The buggy address belongs to the object at ffff8880beab8800
 which belongs to the cache kmalloc-1k of size 1024
The buggy address is located 424 bytes inside of
 freed 1024-byte region [ffff8880beab8800, ffff8880beab8c00)

The buggy address belongs to the physical page:
page:00000000afc77580 refcount:1 mapcount:0 mapping:0000000000000000
    index:0x0 pfn:0xbeab8
head:00000000afc77580 order:3 entire_mapcount:0 nr_pages_mapped:0
    pincount:0
flags: 0xfffffc0010200(slab|head|node=0|zone=1|lastcpupid=0x1fffff)
page_type: 0xffffffff()
raw: 000fffffc0010200 ffff888100042dc0 ffffea000426de00 dead000000000002
raw: 0000000000000000 0000000000100010 00000001ffffffff 0000000000000000
page dumped because: kasan: bad access detected

Memory state around the buggy address:
 ffff8880beab8880: fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb
 ffff8880beab8900: fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb
>ffff8880beab8980: fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb
                                  ^
 ffff8880beab8a00: fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb
 ffff8880beab8a80: fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb
==================================================================
Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint