linux-cve-announce - CVE-2025-21884: net: better track kernel sockets lifetime

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Message-ID: <2025032713-CVE-2025-21884-b70c@gregkh>
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2025 15:58:18 +0100
From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
To: linux-cve-announce@...r.kernel.org
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
Subject: CVE-2025-21884: net: better track kernel sockets lifetime

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

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

net: better track kernel sockets lifetime

While kernel sockets are dismantled during pernet_operations->exit(),
their freeing can be delayed by any tx packets still held in qdisc
or device queues, due to skb_set_owner_w() prior calls.

This then trigger the following warning from ref_tracker_dir_exit() [1]

To fix this, make sure that kernel sockets own a reference on net->passive.

Add sk_net_refcnt_upgrade() helper, used whenever a kernel socket
is converted to a refcounted one.

[1]

[  136.263918][   T35] ref_tracker: net notrefcnt@...f8880638f01e0 has 1/2 users at
[  136.263918][   T35]      sk_alloc+0x2b3/0x370
[  136.263918][   T35]      inet6_create+0x6ce/0x10f0
[  136.263918][   T35]      __sock_create+0x4c0/0xa30
[  136.263918][   T35]      inet_ctl_sock_create+0xc2/0x250
[  136.263918][   T35]      igmp6_net_init+0x39/0x390
[  136.263918][   T35]      ops_init+0x31e/0x590
[  136.263918][   T35]      setup_net+0x287/0x9e0
[  136.263918][   T35]      copy_net_ns+0x33f/0x570
[  136.263918][   T35]      create_new_namespaces+0x425/0x7b0
[  136.263918][   T35]      unshare_nsproxy_namespaces+0x124/0x180
[  136.263918][   T35]      ksys_unshare+0x57d/0xa70
[  136.263918][   T35]      __x64_sys_unshare+0x38/0x40
[  136.263918][   T35]      do_syscall_64+0xf3/0x230
[  136.263918][   T35]      entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x77/0x7f
[  136.263918][   T35]
[  136.343488][   T35] ref_tracker: net notrefcnt@...f8880638f01e0 has 1/2 users at
[  136.343488][   T35]      sk_alloc+0x2b3/0x370
[  136.343488][   T35]      inet6_create+0x6ce/0x10f0
[  136.343488][   T35]      __sock_create+0x4c0/0xa30
[  136.343488][   T35]      inet_ctl_sock_create+0xc2/0x250
[  136.343488][   T35]      ndisc_net_init+0xa7/0x2b0
[  136.343488][   T35]      ops_init+0x31e/0x590
[  136.343488][   T35]      setup_net+0x287/0x9e0
[  136.343488][   T35]      copy_net_ns+0x33f/0x570
[  136.343488][   T35]      create_new_namespaces+0x425/0x7b0
[  136.343488][   T35]      unshare_nsproxy_namespaces+0x124/0x180
[  136.343488][   T35]      ksys_unshare+0x57d/0xa70
[  136.343488][   T35]      __x64_sys_unshare+0x38/0x40
[  136.343488][   T35]      do_syscall_64+0xf3/0x230
[  136.343488][   T35]      entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x77/0x7f

The Linux kernel CVE team has assigned CVE-2025-21884 to this issue.


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

	Issue introduced in 6.2 with commit 0cafd77dcd032d1687efaba5598cf07bce85997f and fixed in 6.13.6 with commit c31a732fac46b00b95b78fcc9c37cb48dd6f2e0c
	Issue introduced in 6.2 with commit 0cafd77dcd032d1687efaba5598cf07bce85997f and fixed in 6.14 with commit 5c70eb5c593d64d93b178905da215a9fd288a4b5

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-2025-21884
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:
	include/net/sock.h
	net/core/sock.c
	net/mptcp/subflow.c
	net/netlink/af_netlink.c
	net/rds/tcp.c
	net/smc/af_smc.c
	net/sunrpc/svcsock.c
	net/sunrpc/xprtsock.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/c31a732fac46b00b95b78fcc9c37cb48dd6f2e0c
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/5c70eb5c593d64d93b178905da215a9fd288a4b5