Bug 2422813 (CVE-2025-68296)

Summary: CVE-2025-68296 kernel: Linux kernel: Denial of Service due to race condition in fbcon setup
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 flaw was found in the Linux kernel. A local user could exploit a race condition in the framebuffer console (fbcon) setup, specifically within the VGA switcheroo component. This race condition occurs when `vga_switcheroo_client_fb_set()` races with switching outputs, leading to an out-of-bounds (OOB) access in `fbcon_remap_all()`. This can result in a denial of service (DoS) to the system.
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2025-12-16 16:03:33 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

drm, fbcon, vga_switcheroo: Avoid race condition in fbcon setup

Protect vga_switcheroo_client_fb_set() with console lock. Avoids OOB
access in fbcon_remap_all(). Without holding the console lock the call
races with switching outputs.

VGA switcheroo calls fbcon_remap_all() when switching clients. The fbcon
function uses struct fb_info.node, which is set by register_framebuffer().
As the fb-helper code currently sets up VGA switcheroo before registering
the framebuffer, the value of node is -1 and therefore not a legal value.
For example, fbcon uses the value within set_con2fb_map() [1] as an index
into an array.

Moving vga_switcheroo_client_fb_set() after register_framebuffer() can
result in VGA switching that does not switch fbcon correctly.

Therefore move vga_switcheroo_client_fb_set() under fbcon_fb_registered(),
which already holds the console lock. Fbdev calls fbcon_fb_registered()
from within register_framebuffer(). Serializes the helper with VGA
switcheroo's call to fbcon_remap_all().

Although vga_switcheroo_client_fb_set() takes an instance of struct fb_info
as parameter, it really only needs the contained fbcon state. Moving the
call to fbcon initialization is therefore cleaner than before. Only amdgpu,
i915, nouveau and radeon support vga_switcheroo. For all other drivers,
this change does nothing.