Affected: Linux

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

l2tp: use refcount_inc_not_zero in l2tp_session_get_by_ifname

A reader in l2tp_session_get_by_ifname() can return a pointer to a session whose refcount has reached zero. The getter takes its reference with plain refcount_inc(), but every other session getter in the same file (l2tp_v2_session_get, l2tp_v3_session_get, and the corresponding _get_next variants) uses refcount_inc_not_zero() because the IDR/RCU lookup can race with refcount_dec_and_test() -> l2tp_session_free() -> kfree_rcu(). The ifname getter is the only outlier; the inconsistency was raised on-list after 979c017803c4 ("l2tp: use list_del_rcu in l2tp_session_unhash").

A reader inside rcu_read_lock_bh() that matches session->ifname can be preempted between the strcmp() and the refcount_inc(). If the last reference drops on another CPU in that window, the reader's refcount_inc() runs on a counter that has reached zero. refcount_t catches the addition-on-zero, prints "refcount_t: addition on 0; use-after-free", saturates the counter, and returns the saturated pointer to the caller. Session memory is held live by the in-flight RCU read section, but the kfree_rcu() callback queued from l2tp_session_free() will free it once the grace period closes; a caller that dereferences the returned session past that point hits a slab-use-after-free. On PREEMPT_RT local_bh_disable() is a per-CPU sleeping lock and the preemption window is real; on stock PREEMP…