Affected: Linux

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

fs/resctrl: Prevent use-after-free in rdtgroup_kn_put()

A struct rdtgroup is reference counted via rdtgroup::waitcount. Callers that need the structure to remain valid across a sleep (while waiting on acquiring rdtgroup_mutex) take a reference with rdtgroup_kn_get() and release it with rdtgroup_kn_put().

The release path is intended to serve as the fallback freer: if the count drops to zero and the group has already been marked RDT_DELETED, rdtgroup_kn_put() frees the structure.

The bulk teardown paths free_all_child_rdtgrp() and rmdir_all_sub() resulting from a resctrl directory remove or resctrl fs unmount act as the primary freer: they hold rdtgroup_mutex and free each rdtgroup whose waitcount is zero, otherwise they set RDT_DELETED and leave the freeing to the last waiter.

These two freers race. rdtgroup_kn_put() commits waitcount == 0 with atomic_dec_and_test() outside rdtgroup_mutex, then reads rdtgroup::flags. Between those two operations a concurrent caller of free_all_child_rdtgrp() or rmdir_all_sub() (which holds the mutex) can observe waitcount == 0 via atomic_read(), call rdtgroup_remove(), and kfree() the structure.

The subsequent read of rdtgroup::flags in rdtgroup_kn_put() is then a use-after-free, and the structure may even be freed twice if the freed memory happens to satisfy the RDT_DELETED flag check.

Replace the bare atomic_dec_and_test() with atomic_dec_and_mutex_lock() so that th…