linux/init
Cen Zhang (Microsoft) 5a88f78df7
reboot: fix cad_pid use-after-free race
cad_pid is a single kernel-wide struct pid pointer. proc_do_cad_pid()
reads it and passes it to pid_vnr() without protecting the lifetime of
the referenced struct pid. A concurrent writer can replace cad_pid and
drop the final reference to the old struct pid after the reader has
loaded the pointer but before pid_vnr() has finished dereferencing it,
causing a use-after-free.

kill_cad_pid() has the same lifetime race when it passes cad_pid to
kill_pid().

At the time this issue was reported, an unprivileged user could reach the
sysctl through user and PID namespaces because cad_pid was registered in
pid_table[]. Moving cad_pid back to the global reboot sysctl table
corrected that namespace and permission mismatch, but did not fix the
underlying lifetime race.

Fix this by treating cad_pid as an RCU-protected pointer at both read
sites and by waiting for a grace period before dropping the old reference
on the write side.

call_rcu(&old_pid->rcu, ...) cannot be used here because free_pid()
also queues pid->rcu; queueing the same rcu_head twice can corrupt the
RCU callback list.

Original KASAN crash stack:
  kernel/pid.c:545 pid_nr_ns()        # reads freed pid->level
  kernel/pid.c:556 pid_vnr()          # calls pid_nr_ns()
  kernel/pid.c:775 proc_do_cad_pid()  # calls pid_vnr(cad_pid)

Fixes: 9ec52099e4 ("[PATCH] replace cad_pid by a struct pid")
Reported-by: AutonomousCodeSecurity@microsoft.com
Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20260717210143.4734-1-blbllhy@gmail.com/
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/alz5ZYLE4kaq_v2P@redhat.com/
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/al4ICz9biJKtdZc4@redhat.com/
Suggested-by: Mateusz Guzik <mjguzik@gmail.com>
Suggested-by: Bradley Morgan <include@grrlz.net>
Suggested-by: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
Suggested-by: Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com>
Suggested-by: Pavel Tikhomirov <ptikhomirov@virtuozzo.com>
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Cen Zhang (Microsoft) <blbllhy@gmail.com>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260814040944.16561-1-blbllhy@gmail.com
Reviewed-by: Bradley Morgan <include@grrlz.net>
Reviewed-by: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Pavel Tikhomirov <ptikhomirov@virtuozzo.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner (Amutable) <brauner@kernel.org>
2026-08-31 10:25:46 +02:00
..
.gitignore kbuild: build init/built-in.a just once 2022-09-29 04:40:15 +09:00
.kunitconfig initramfs_test: kunit tests for initramfs unpacking 2025-03-08 12:13:04 +01:00
calibrate.c calibrate: Rework delay timer calibration 2026-07-15 15:04:55 +02:00
do_mounts_initrd.c init: remove /proc/sys/kernel/real-root-dev 2026-01-12 17:22:27 +01:00
do_mounts_rd.c initrd: remove deprecated code path (linuxrc) 2026-01-12 17:22:22 +01:00
do_mounts.c init: do_mounts: use kmalloc() for allocations of temporary buffers 2026-05-22 12:12:20 +02:00
do_mounts.h fs: use nullfs unconditionally as the real rootfs 2026-01-14 11:23:39 +01:00
init_task.c sched_ext: Changes for v7.3 2026-08-20 11:01:37 -07:00
initramfs_internal.h init: add initramfs_internal.h 2025-03-04 09:52:36 +01:00
initramfs_test.c initramfs_test: use test init/exit hooks to override init fs 2026-07-31 12:56:51 +02:00
initramfs.c vfs-7.3-rc1.misc 2026-08-17 12:56:12 -07:00
Kconfig mm.git review status for mm-hotfixes-stable..mm-stable 2026-08-20 18:17:08 -07:00
main.c reboot: fix cad_pid use-after-free race 2026-08-31 10:25:46 +02:00
Makefile initramfs_test: kunit tests for initramfs unpacking 2025-03-08 12:13:04 +01:00
noinitramfs.c init: move usermodehelper_enable() to populate_rootfs() 2021-09-08 11:50:27 -07:00
version-timestamp.c ns: drop custom reference count initialization for initial namespaces 2025-11-11 10:01:32 +01:00
version.c init/version.c: Replace strlcpy with strscpy 2023-09-22 09:50:56 -07:00