Bug 2420361 (CVE-2023-53823)

Summary: CVE-2023-53823 kernel: block/rq_qos: protect rq_qos apis with a new lock
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
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Version: unspecifiedKeywords: Security
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OS: Linux   
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Multiple race condition vulnerabilities were found in the block layer's request quality of service (rq_qos) subsystem in the Linux kernel. The rq_qos APIs lacked proper synchronization, leading to: concurrent writes to q->rq_qos causing data corruption, NULL pointer dereferences when rq_qos_exit() races with cgroup policy activation, and memory leaks when disk deletion races with rq_qos additions. These issues can cause system instability or crashes.
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2025-12-09 02:05:39 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

block/rq_qos: protect rq_qos apis with a new lock

commit 50e34d78815e ("block: disable the elevator int del_gendisk")
move rq_qos_exit() from disk_release() to del_gendisk(), this will
introduce some problems:

1) If rq_qos_add() is triggered by enabling iocost/iolatency through
   cgroupfs, then it can concurrent with del_gendisk(), it's not safe to
   write 'q->rq_qos' concurrently.

2) Activate cgroup policy that is relied on rq_qos will call
   rq_qos_add() and blkcg_activate_policy(), and if rq_qos_exit() is
   called in the middle, null-ptr-dereference will be triggered in
   blkcg_activate_policy().

3) blkg_conf_open_bdev() can call blkdev_get_no_open() first to find the
   disk, then if rq_qos_exit() from del_gendisk() is done before
   rq_qos_add(), then memory will be leaked.

This patch add a new disk level mutex 'rq_qos_mutex':

1) The lock will protect rq_qos_exit() directly.

2) For wbt that doesn't relied on blk-cgroup, rq_qos_add() can only be
   called from disk initialization for now because wbt can't be
   destructed until rq_qos_exit(), so it's safe not to protect wbt for
   now. Hoever, in case that rq_qos dynamically destruction is supported
   in the furture, this patch also protect rq_qos_add() from wbt_init()
   directly, this is enough because blk-sysfs already synchronize
   writers with disk removal.

3) For iocost and iolatency, in order to synchronize disk removal and
   cgroup configuration, the lock is held after blkdev_get_no_open()
   from blkg_conf_open_bdev(), and is released in blkg_conf_exit().
   In order to fix the above memory leak, disk_live() is checked after
   holding the new lock.