linux/net/netlink
Eric Dumazet ceac0de741 netlink: do not free nlk->groups while lockless readers can use it
netlink_realloc_groups() uses krealloc() under netlink_table_grab().
Whenever NLGRPSZ(groups) lands in a different kmalloc bucket, the old
bitmap is freed immediately.

Two readers of nlk->groups / nlk->ngroups do not hold the netlink
table lock:

1) sk_diag_dump_groups(). Hashed (bound) sockets are dumped from the
   rhashtable walk in __netlink_diag_dump(), which only holds RCU.
   Only the mc_list part of the dump takes nl_table_lock.

2) netlink_native_seq_show() (/proc/net/netlink), whose walk has been
   lockless since commit 21e4902aea ("netlink: Lockless lookup with
   RCU grace period in socket release").

Both can read a freed buffer, and sk_diag_dump_groups() can also read
past the end of the old (smaller) buffer if it happens to load the old
@groups pointer together with the new @ngroups value, copying the
result into a NETLINK_DIAG_GROUPS attribute.

This is the same class of bug that commit f773608026 ("netlink:
access nlk groups safely in netlink bind and getname") fixed for bind()
and getname(); these two readers were missed. Simply grabbing the table
lock in sk_diag_dump_groups() is not an option, because it is also
called with nl_table_lock already held from the mc_list section of the
dump.

Make the lockless readers safe instead:

- Allocate a new bitmap and free the old one after an RCU grace period,
  instead of relying on the implicit kfree() done by krealloc().

- Publish @groups before @ngroups, both with release semantics, and have
  the lockless readers load @ngroups first. A reader can then never pair
  the new (bigger) size with the old (smaller) buffer, and a reader
  picking up the new pointer while still seeing the old size is
  guaranteed to see the initialized bitmap.

netlink_realloc_groups() is called from process context (bind() and
setsockopt()), so kfree_rcu_mightsleep() can be used, once the table
has been released.

Fixes: 21e4902aea ("netlink: Lockless lookup with RCU grace period in socket release")
Fixes: ad20207432 ("netlink: Use rhashtable walk interface in diag dump")
Reported-by: James Burton <jamesburton@meta.com>
Signed-off-by: Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260911160804.917099-1-edumazet@google.com
Signed-off-by: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>
2026-09-15 18:44:02 -07:00
..
af_netlink.c netlink: do not free nlk->groups while lockless readers can use it 2026-09-15 18:44:02 -07:00
af_netlink.h netlink: terminate outstanding dump on socket close 2024-11-07 13:45:34 -08:00
diag.c netlink: do not free nlk->groups while lockless readers can use it 2026-09-15 18:44:02 -07:00
genetlink.c genetlink: pin family module during policy dump 2026-09-03 17:21:35 -07:00
genetlink.h netlink: create a new header for internal genetlink symbols 2024-04-01 21:44:34 -07:00
Kconfig treewide: replace '---help---' in Kconfig files with 'help' 2020-06-14 01:57:21 +09:00
Makefile netlink: add infrastructure to expose policies to userspace 2020-04-30 17:51:42 -07:00
policy.c genetlink: use maxattr of 0 for the reject policy 2026-03-12 18:02:13 -07:00