Affected: Linux

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

drm/drm_file: Fix pid refcounting race

<maarten.lankhorst@linux.intel.com>, Maxime Ripard <mripard@kernel.org>, Thomas Zimmermann <tzimmermann@suse.de>

filp->pid is supposed to be a refcounted pointer; however, before this patch, drm_file_update_pid() only increments the refcount of a struct pid after storing a pointer to it in filp->pid and dropping the dev->filelist_mutex, making the following race possible:

process A process B ========= ========= begin drm_file_update_pid mutex_lock(&dev->filelist_mutex) rcu_replace_pointer(filp->pid, <pid B>, 1) mutex_unlock(&dev->filelist_mutex) begin drm_file_update_pid mutex_lock(&dev->filelist_mutex) rcu_replace_pointer(filp->pid, <pid A>, 1) mutex_unlock(&dev->filelist_mutex) get_pid(<pid A>) synchronize_rcu() put_pid(<pid B>) *** pid B reaches refcount 0 and is freed here *** get_pid(<pid B>) *** UAF *** synchronize_rcu() put_pid(<pid A>)

As far as I know, this race can only occur with CONFIG_PREEMPT_RCU=y because it requires RCU to detect a quiescent state in code that is not explicitly calling into the scheduler.

This race leads to use-after-free of a "struct pid". It is probably somewhat hard to hit because process A has to pass through a synchronize_rcu() ope…