Affected: Linux

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

net/tcp: Disable TCP-AO static key after RCU grace period

The lifetime of TCP-AO static_key is the same as the last tcp_ao_info. On the socket destruction tcp_ao_info ceases to be with RCU grace period, while tcp-ao static branch is currently deferred destructed. The static key definition is : DEFINE_STATIC_KEY_DEFERRED_FALSE(tcp_ao_needed, HZ);

which means that if RCU grace period is delayed by more than a second and tcp_ao_needed is in the process of disablement, other CPUs may yet see tcp_ao_info which atent dead, but soon-to-be. And that breaks the assumption of static_key_fast_inc_not_disabled().

See the comment near the definition: > * The caller must make sure that the static key can't get disabled while > * in this function. It doesn't patch jump labels, only adds a user to > * an already enabled static key.

Originally it was introduced in commit eb8c507296f6 ("jump_label: Prevent key->enabled int overflow"), which is needed for the atomic contexts, one of which would be the creation of a full socket from a request socket. In that atomic context, it's known by the presence of the key (md5/ao) that the static branch is already enabled. So, the ref counter for that static branch is just incremented instead of holding the proper mutex. static_key_fast_inc_not_disabled() is just a helper for such usage case. But it must not be used if the static branch could get disabled in parallel as it's not prot…