linux-cve-announce - CVE-2023-54149: net: dsa: avoid suspicious RCU usage for synced VLAN-aware MAC addresses

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Message-ID: <2025122426-CVE-2023-54149-e39f@gregkh>
Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2025 14:07:46 +0100
From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
To: linux-cve-announce@...r.kernel.org
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...nel.org>
Subject: CVE-2023-54149: net: dsa: avoid suspicious RCU usage for synced VLAN-aware MAC addresses

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

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

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

net: dsa: avoid suspicious RCU usage for synced VLAN-aware MAC addresses

When using the felix driver (the only one which supports UC filtering
and MC filtering) as a DSA master for a random other DSA switch, one can
see the following stack trace when the downstream switch ports join a
VLAN-aware bridge:

=============================
WARNING: suspicious RCU usage
-----------------------------
net/8021q/vlan_core.c:238 suspicious rcu_dereference_protected() usage!

stack backtrace:
Workqueue: dsa_ordered dsa_slave_switchdev_event_work
Call trace:
 lockdep_rcu_suspicious+0x170/0x210
 vlan_for_each+0x8c/0x188
 dsa_slave_sync_uc+0x128/0x178
 __hw_addr_sync_dev+0x138/0x158
 dsa_slave_set_rx_mode+0x58/0x70
 __dev_set_rx_mode+0x88/0xa8
 dev_uc_add+0x74/0xa0
 dsa_port_bridge_host_fdb_add+0xec/0x180
 dsa_slave_switchdev_event_work+0x7c/0x1c8
 process_one_work+0x290/0x568

What it's saying is that vlan_for_each() expects rtnl_lock() context and
it's not getting it, when it's called from the DSA master's ndo_set_rx_mode().

The caller of that - dsa_slave_set_rx_mode() - is the slave DSA
interface's dsa_port_bridge_host_fdb_add() which comes from the deferred
dsa_slave_switchdev_event_work().

We went to great lengths to avoid the rtnl_lock() context in that call
path in commit 0faf890fc519 ("net: dsa: drop rtnl_lock from
dsa_slave_switchdev_event_work"), and calling rtnl_lock() is simply not
an option due to the possibility of deadlocking when calling
dsa_flush_workqueue() from the call paths that do hold rtnl_lock() -
basically all of them.

So, when the DSA master calls vlan_for_each() from its ndo_set_rx_mode(),
the state of the 8021q driver on this device is really not protected
from concurrent access by anything.

Looking at net/8021q/, I don't think that vlan_info->vid_list was
particularly designed with RCU traversal in mind, so introducing an RCU
read-side form of vlan_for_each() - vlan_for_each_rcu() - won't be so
easy, and it also wouldn't be exactly what we need anyway.

In general I believe that the solution isn't in net/8021q/ anyway;
vlan_for_each() is not cut out for this task. DSA doesn't need rtnl_lock()
to be held per se - since it's not a netdev state change that we're
blocking, but rather, just concurrent additions/removals to a VLAN list.
We don't even need sleepable context - the callback of vlan_for_each()
just schedules deferred work.

The proposed escape is to remove the dependency on vlan_for_each() and
to open-code a non-sleepable, rtnl-free alternative to that, based on
copies of the VLAN list modified from .ndo_vlan_rx_add_vid() and
.ndo_vlan_rx_kill_vid().

The Linux kernel CVE team has assigned CVE-2023-54149 to this issue.

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

	Issue introduced in 6.3 with commit 64fdc5f341db01200e33105265d4b8450122a82e and fixed in 6.3.13 with commit 3948c69b3837fec2ee5a90fbc911c343199be0ac
	Issue introduced in 6.3 with commit 64fdc5f341db01200e33105265d4b8450122a82e and fixed in 6.4.4 with commit 3f9e79f31e51b7d5bf95c617540deb6cf2816a3f
	Issue introduced in 6.3 with commit 64fdc5f341db01200e33105265d4b8450122a82e and fixed in 6.5 with commit d06f925f13976ab82167c93467c70a337a0a3cda
	Issue introduced in 6.2.10 with commit 2daf967a24334865e51520e55190a646dd480cd7

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-2023-54149
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/dsa.h
	net/dsa/dsa.c
	net/dsa/slave.c
	net/dsa/switch.c
	net/dsa/switch.h

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/3948c69b3837fec2ee5a90fbc911c343199be0ac
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3f9e79f31e51b7d5bf95c617540deb6cf2816a3f
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/d06f925f13976ab82167c93467c70a337a0a3cda