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Unrated severityNVD Advisory· Published Dec 27, 2024· Updated Nov 3, 2025

ubifs: authentication: Fix use-after-free in ubifs_tnc_end_commit

CVE-2024-53171

Description

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

ubifs: authentication: Fix use-after-free in ubifs_tnc_end_commit

After an insertion in TNC, the tree might split and cause a node to change its znode->parent. A further deletion of other nodes in the tree (which also could free the nodes), the aforementioned node's znode->cparent could still point to a freed node. This znode->cparent may not be updated when getting nodes to commit in ubifs_tnc_start_commit(). This could then trigger a use-after-free when accessing the znode->cparent in write_index() in ubifs_tnc_end_commit().

This can be triggered by running

rm -f /etc/test-file.bin dd if=/dev/urandom of=/etc/test-file.bin bs=1M count=60 conv=fsync

in a loop, and with CONFIG_UBIFS_FS_AUTHENTICATION. KASAN then reports:

BUG: KASAN: use-after-free in ubifs_tnc_end_commit+0xa5c/0x1950 Write of size 32 at addr ffffff800a3af86c by task ubifs_bgt0_20/153

Call trace: dump_backtrace+0x0/0x340 show_stack+0x18/0x24 dump_stack_lvl+0x9c/0xbc print_address_description.constprop.0+0x74/0x2b0 kasan_report+0x1d8/0x1f0 kasan_check_range+0xf8/0x1a0 memcpy+0x84/0xf4 ubifs_tnc_end_commit+0xa5c/0x1950 do_commit+0x4e0/0x1340 ubifs_bg_thread+0x234/0x2e0 kthread+0x36c/0x410 ret_from_fork+0x10/0x20

Allocated by task 401: kasan_save_stack+0x38/0x70 __kasan_kmalloc+0x8c/0xd0 __kmalloc+0x34c/0x5bc tnc_insert+0x140/0x16a4 ubifs_tnc_add+0x370/0x52c ubifs_jnl_write_data+0x5d8/0x870 do_writepage+0x36c/0x510 ubifs_writepage+0x190/0x4dc __writepage+0x58/0x154 write_cache_pages+0x394/0x830 do_writepages+0x1f0/0x5b0 filemap_fdatawrite_wbc+0x170/0x25c file_write_and_wait_range+0x140/0x190 ubifs_fsync+0xe8/0x290 vfs_fsync_range+0xc0/0x1e4 do_fsync+0x40/0x90 __arm64_sys_fsync+0x34/0x50 invoke_syscall.constprop.0+0xa8/0x260 do_el0_svc+0xc8/0x1f0 el0_svc+0x34/0x70 el0t_64_sync_handler+0x108/0x114 el0t_64_sync+0x1a4/0x1a8

Freed by task 403: kasan_save_stack+0x38/0x70 kasan_set_track+0x28/0x40 kasan_set_free_info+0x28/0x4c __kasan_slab_free+0xd4/0x13c kfree+0xc4/0x3a0 tnc_delete+0x3f4/0xe40 ubifs_tnc_remove_range+0x368/0x73c ubifs_tnc_remove_ino+0x29c/0x2e0 ubifs_jnl_delete_inode+0x150/0x260 ubifs_evict_inode+0x1d4/0x2e4 evict+0x1c8/0x450 iput+0x2a0/0x3c4 do_unlinkat+0x2cc/0x490 __arm64_sys_unlinkat+0x90/0x100 invoke_syscall.constprop.0+0xa8/0x260 do_el0_svc+0xc8/0x1f0 el0_svc+0x34/0x70 el0t_64_sync_handler+0x108/0x114 el0t_64_sync+0x1a4/0x1a8

The offending memcpy() in ubifs_copy_hash() has a use-after-free when a node becomes root in TNC but still has a cparent to an already freed node. More specifically, consider the following TNC:

zroot / / zp1 / / zn

Inserting a new node zn_new with a key smaller then zn will trigger a split in tnc_insert() if zp1 is full:

zroot / \ / \ zp1 zp2 / \ / \ zn_new zn

zn->parent has now been moved to zp2, *but* zn->cparent still points to zp1.

Now, consider a removal of all the nodes _except_ zn. Just when tnc_delete() is about to delete zroot and zp2:

zroot \ \ zp2 \ \ zn

zroot and zp2 get freed and the tree collapses:

zn

zn now becomes the new zroot.

get_znodes_to_commit() will now only find zn, the new zroot, and write_index() will check its znode->cparent that wrongly points to the already freed zp1. ubifs_copy_hash() thus gets wrongly called with znode->cparent->zbranch[znode->iip].hash that triggers the use-after-free!

Fix this by explicitly setting znode->cparent to NULL in get_znodes_to_commit() for the root node. The search for the dirty nodes ---truncated---

Affected products

106

Patches

0

No patches discovered yet.

Vulnerability mechanics

AI mechanics synthesis has not run for this CVE yet.

References

8

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