linux-cve-announce - CVE-2025-38517: lib/alloc_tag: do not acquire non-existent lock in alloc_tag_top

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Message-ID: <2025081653-CVE-2025-38517-2883@gregkh>
Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2025 12:57:59 +0200
From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
To: linux-cve-announce@...r.kernel.org
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...nel.org>
Subject: CVE-2025-38517: lib/alloc_tag: do not acquire non-existent lock in alloc_tag_top_users()

From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...nel.org>

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

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

lib/alloc_tag: do not acquire non-existent lock in alloc_tag_top_users()

alloc_tag_top_users() attempts to lock alloc_tag_cttype->mod_lock even
when the alloc_tag_cttype is not allocated because:

  1) alloc tagging is disabled because mem profiling is disabled
     (!alloc_tag_cttype)
  2) alloc tagging is enabled, but not yet initialized (!alloc_tag_cttype)
  3) alloc tagging is enabled, but failed initialization
     (!alloc_tag_cttype or IS_ERR(alloc_tag_cttype))

In all cases, alloc_tag_cttype is not allocated, and therefore
alloc_tag_top_users() should not attempt to acquire the semaphore.

This leads to a crash on memory allocation failure by attempting to
acquire a non-existent semaphore:

  Oops: general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xdffffc000000001b: 0000 [#3] SMP KASAN NOPTI
  KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x00000000000000d8-0x00000000000000df]
  CPU: 2 UID: 0 PID: 1 Comm: systemd Tainted: G      D             6.16.0-rc2 #1 VOLUNTARY
  Tainted: [D]=DIE
  Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS 1.16.2-debian-1.16.2-1 04/01/2014
  RIP: 0010:down_read_trylock+0xaa/0x3b0
  Code: d0 7c 08 84 d2 0f 85 a0 02 00 00 8b 0d df 31 dd 04 85 c9 75 29 48 b8 00 00 00 00 00 fc ff df 48 8d 6b 68 48 89 ea 48 c1 ea 03 <80> 3c 02 00 0f 85 88 02 00 00 48 3b 5b 68 0f 85 53 01 00 00 65 ff
  RSP: 0000:ffff8881002ce9b8 EFLAGS: 00010016
  RAX: dffffc0000000000 RBX: 0000000000000070 RCX: 0000000000000000
  RDX: 000000000000001b RSI: 000000000000000a RDI: 0000000000000070
  RBP: 00000000000000d8 R08: 0000000000000001 R09: ffffed107dde49d1
  R10: ffff8883eef24e8b R11: ffff8881002cec20 R12: 1ffff11020059d37
  R13: 00000000003fff7b R14: ffff8881002cec20 R15: dffffc0000000000
  FS:  00007f963f21d940(0000) GS:ffff888458ca6000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000
  CS:  0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033
  CR2: 00007f963f5edf71 CR3: 000000010672c000 CR4: 0000000000350ef0
  Call Trace:
   <TASK>
   codetag_trylock_module_list+0xd/0x20
   alloc_tag_top_users+0x369/0x4b0
   __show_mem+0x1cd/0x6e0
   warn_alloc+0x2b1/0x390
   __alloc_frozen_pages_noprof+0x12b9/0x21a0
   alloc_pages_mpol+0x135/0x3e0
   alloc_slab_page+0x82/0xe0
   new_slab+0x212/0x240
   ___slab_alloc+0x82a/0xe00
   </TASK>

As David Wang points out, this issue became easier to trigger after commit
780138b12381 ("alloc_tag: check mem_profiling_support in alloc_tag_init").

Before the commit, the issue occurred only when it failed to allocate and
initialize alloc_tag_cttype or if a memory allocation fails before
alloc_tag_init() is called.  After the commit, it can be easily triggered
when memory profiling is compiled but disabled at boot.

To properly determine whether alloc_tag_init() has been called and its
data structures initialized, verify that alloc_tag_cttype is a valid
pointer before acquiring the semaphore.  If the variable is NULL or an
error value, it has not been properly initialized.  In such a case, just
skip and do not attempt to acquire the semaphore.

[harry.yoo@...cle.com: v3]

The Linux kernel CVE team has assigned CVE-2025-38517 to this issue.


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

	Issue introduced in 6.10 with commit 1438d349d16b78d88f9e978a4a5496f078c8191b and fixed in 6.12.39 with commit febc0b5dbabda414565bdfaaaa59d26f787d5fe7
	Issue introduced in 6.10 with commit 1438d349d16b78d88f9e978a4a5496f078c8191b and fixed in 6.15.7 with commit 22bf79c0c2301b6e15a688220284b147774d277e
	Issue introduced in 6.10 with commit 1438d349d16b78d88f9e978a4a5496f078c8191b and fixed in 6.16 with commit 99af22cd34688cc0d535a1919e0bea4cbc6c1ea1

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-2025-38517
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:
	lib/alloc_tag.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/febc0b5dbabda414565bdfaaaa59d26f787d5fe7
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/22bf79c0c2301b6e15a688220284b147774d277e
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/99af22cd34688cc0d535a1919e0bea4cbc6c1ea1