CVE-2021-46912

NameCVE-2021-46912
DescriptionIn the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: Make tcp_allowed_congestion_control readonly in non-init netns Currently, tcp_allowed_congestion_control is global and writable; writing to it in any net namespace will leak into all other net namespaces. tcp_available_congestion_control and tcp_allowed_congestion_control are the only sysctls in ipv4_net_table (the per-netns sysctl table) with a NULL data pointer; their handlers (proc_tcp_available_congestion_control and proc_allowed_congestion_control) have no other way of referencing a struct net. Thus, they operate globally. Because ipv4_net_table does not use designated initializers, there is no easy way to fix up this one "bad" table entry. However, the data pointer updating logic shouldn't be applied to NULL pointers anyway, so we instead force these entries to be read-only. These sysctls used to exist in ipv4_table (init-net only), but they were moved to the per-net ipv4_net_table, presumably without realizing that tcp_allowed_congestion_control was writable and thus introduced a leak. Because the intent of that commit was only to know (i.e. read) "which congestion algorithms are available or allowed", this read-only solution should be sufficient. The logic added in recent commit 31c4d2f160eb: ("net: Ensure net namespace isolation of sysctls") does not and cannot check for NULL data pointers, because other table entries (e.g. /proc/sys/net/netfilter/nf_log/) have .data=NULL but use other methods (.extra2) to access the struct net.
SourceCVE (at NVD; CERT, LWN, oss-sec, fulldisc, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Gentoo, SUSE bugzilla/CVE, GitHub advisories/code/issues, web search, more)

Vulnerable and fixed packages

The table below lists information on source packages.

Source PackageReleaseVersionStatus
linux (PTS)jessie, jessie (lts)3.16.84-1vulnerable
stretch (security)4.9.320-2vulnerable
stretch (lts), stretch4.9.320-3vulnerable
buster (security), buster, buster (lts)4.19.316-1fixed
bullseye5.10.223-1fixed
bullseye (security)5.10.226-1fixed
bookworm6.1.115-1fixed
bookworm (security)6.1.119-1fixed
trixie6.12.5-1fixed
sid6.12.6-1fixed

The information below is based on the following data on fixed versions.

PackageTypeReleaseFixed VersionUrgencyOriginDebian Bugs
linuxsourcejessie(unfixed)end-of-life
linuxsourcestretch(unfixed)end-of-life
linuxsourcebuster(not affected)
linuxsource(unstable)5.10.38-1

Notes

[buster] - linux <not-affected> (Vulnerable code not present)
https://git.kernel.org/linus/97684f0970f6e112926de631fdd98d9693c7e5c1 (5.12-rc8)

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