linux-cve-announce - CVE-2023-53836: bpf, sockmap: Fix skb refcnt race after locking changes

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Message-ID: <2025120955-CVE-2023-53836-6cb5@gregkh>
Date: Tue,  9 Dec 2025 10:31:20 +0900
From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
To: linux-cve-announce@...r.kernel.org
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...nel.org>
Subject: CVE-2023-53836: bpf, sockmap: Fix skb refcnt race after locking changes

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

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

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

bpf, sockmap: Fix skb refcnt race after locking changes

There is a race where skb's from the sk_psock_backlog can be referenced
after userspace side has already skb_consumed() the sk_buff and its refcnt
dropped to zer0 causing use after free.

The flow is the following:

  while ((skb = skb_peek(&psock->ingress_skb))
    sk_psock_handle_Skb(psock, skb, ..., ingress)
    if (!ingress) ...
    sk_psock_skb_ingress
       sk_psock_skb_ingress_enqueue(skb)
          msg->skb = skb
          sk_psock_queue_msg(psock, msg)
    skb_dequeue(&psock->ingress_skb)

The sk_psock_queue_msg() puts the msg on the ingress_msg queue. This is
what the application reads when recvmsg() is called. An application can
read this anytime after the msg is placed on the queue. The recvmsg hook
will also read msg->skb and then after user space reads the msg will call
consume_skb(skb) on it effectively free'ing it.

But, the race is in above where backlog queue still has a reference to
the skb and calls skb_dequeue(). If the skb_dequeue happens after the
user reads and free's the skb we have a use after free.

The !ingress case does not suffer from this problem because it uses
sendmsg_*(sk, msg) which does not pass the sk_buff further down the
stack.

The following splat was observed with 'test_progs -t sockmap_listen':

  [ 1022.710250][ T2556] general protection fault, ...
  [...]
  [ 1022.712830][ T2556] Workqueue: events sk_psock_backlog
  [ 1022.713262][ T2556] RIP: 0010:skb_dequeue+0x4c/0x80
  [ 1022.713653][ T2556] Code: ...
  [...]
  [ 1022.720699][ T2556] Call Trace:
  [ 1022.720984][ T2556]  <TASK>
  [ 1022.721254][ T2556]  ? die_addr+0x32/0x80^M
  [ 1022.721589][ T2556]  ? exc_general_protection+0x25a/0x4b0
  [ 1022.722026][ T2556]  ? asm_exc_general_protection+0x22/0x30
  [ 1022.722489][ T2556]  ? skb_dequeue+0x4c/0x80
  [ 1022.722854][ T2556]  sk_psock_backlog+0x27a/0x300
  [ 1022.723243][ T2556]  process_one_work+0x2a7/0x5b0
  [ 1022.723633][ T2556]  worker_thread+0x4f/0x3a0
  [ 1022.723998][ T2556]  ? __pfx_worker_thread+0x10/0x10
  [ 1022.724386][ T2556]  kthread+0xfd/0x130
  [ 1022.724709][ T2556]  ? __pfx_kthread+0x10/0x10
  [ 1022.725066][ T2556]  ret_from_fork+0x2d/0x50
  [ 1022.725409][ T2556]  ? __pfx_kthread+0x10/0x10
  [ 1022.725799][ T2556]  ret_from_fork_asm+0x1b/0x30
  [ 1022.726201][ T2556]  </TASK>

To fix we add an skb_get() before passing the skb to be enqueued in the
engress queue. This bumps the skb->users refcnt so that consume_skb()
and kfree_skb will not immediately free the sk_buff. With this we can
be sure the skb is still around when we do the dequeue. Then we just
need to decrement the refcnt or free the skb in the backlog case which
we do by calling kfree_skb() on the ingress case as well as the sendmsg
case.

Before locking change from fixes tag we had the sock locked so we
couldn't race with user and there was no issue here.

The Linux kernel CVE team has assigned CVE-2023-53836 to this issue.


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

	Issue introduced in 5.13 with commit 799aa7f98d53e0f541fa6b4dc9aa47b4ff2178e3 and fixed in 5.15.189 with commit 65ad600b9bde68d2d28709943ab00b51ca8f0a1d
	Issue introduced in 5.13 with commit 799aa7f98d53e0f541fa6b4dc9aa47b4ff2178e3 and fixed in 6.1.54 with commit 923877254f002ae87d441382bb1096d9e773d56d
	Issue introduced in 5.13 with commit 799aa7f98d53e0f541fa6b4dc9aa47b4ff2178e3 and fixed in 6.5.4 with commit e6b5e47adb9166e732cdf7e6e034946e3f89f36d
	Issue introduced in 5.13 with commit 799aa7f98d53e0f541fa6b4dc9aa47b4ff2178e3 and fixed in 6.6 with commit a454d84ee20baf7bd7be90721b9821f73c7d23d9

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-2023-53836
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/core/skmsg.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/65ad600b9bde68d2d28709943ab00b51ca8f0a1d
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/923877254f002ae87d441382bb1096d9e773d56d
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e6b5e47adb9166e732cdf7e6e034946e3f89f36d
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a454d84ee20baf7bd7be90721b9821f73c7d23d9