CVEvulnerability
CVE-2021-47546
5.5 MEDIUM
Official page ↗
- Status
- Modified
- Published
- 2024-05-24
- Last modified
- 2026-06-17
- Assigner
- 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
- CVSS 3.1 ([email protected])
- 5.5 MEDIUM — CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- Weaknesses
- CWE-401
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
ipv6: fix memory leak in fib6_rule_suppress
The kernel leaks memory when a `fib` rule is present in IPv6 nftables
firewall rules and a suppress_prefix rule is present in the IPv6 routing
rules (used by certain tools such as wg-quick). In such scenarios, every
incoming packet will leak an allocation in `ip6_dst_cache` slab cache.
After some hours of `bpftrace`-ing and source code reading, I tracked
down the issue to ca7a03c41753 ("ipv6: do not free rt if
FIB_LOOKUP_NOREF is set on suppress rule").
The problem with that change is that the generic `args->flags` always have
`FIB_LOOKUP_NOREF` set[1][2] but the IPv6-specific flag
`RT6_LOOKUP_F_DST_NOREF` might not be, leading to `fib6_rule_suppress` not
decreasing the refcount when needed.
How to reproduce:
- Add the following nftables rule to a prerouting chain:
meta nfproto ipv6 fib saddr . mark . iif oif missing drop
This can be done with:
sudo nft create table inet test
sudo nft create chain inet test test_chain '{ type filter hook prerouting priority filter + 10; policy accept; }'
sudo nft add rule inet test test_chain meta nfproto ipv6 fib saddr . mark . iif oif missing drop
- Run:
sudo ip -6 rule add table main suppress_prefixlength 0
- Watch `sudo slabtop -o | grep ip6_dst_cache` to see memory usage increase
with every incoming ipv6 packet.
This patch exposes the protocol-specific flags to the protocol
specific `suppress` function, and check the protocol-specific `flags`
argument for RT6_LOOKUP_F_DST_NOREF instead of the generic
FIB_LOOKUP_NOREF when decreasing the refcount, like this.
[1]: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/ca7a03c4175366a92cee0ccc4fec0038c3266e26/net/ipv6/fib6_rules.c#L71
[2]: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/ca7a03c4175366a92cee0ccc4fec0038c3266e26/net/ipv6/fib6_rules.c#L99
Affected configurations
• linux linux kernel (>= 5.4 < 5.4.164)
• linux linux kernel (>= 5.5 < 5.10.84)
• linux linux kernel (>= 5.11 < 5.15.7)
Related
Weakness · CWE (1)
- CWE-401 Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime weakness
References
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/209d35ee34e25f9668c404350a1c86d914c54ffa Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/8ef8a76a340ebdb2c2eea3f6fb0ebbed09a16383 Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/cdef485217d30382f3bf6448c54b4401648fe3f1 Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ee38eb8cf9a7323884c2b8e0adbbeb2192d31e29 Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/209d35ee34e25f9668c404350a1c86d914c54ffa Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/8ef8a76a340ebdb2c2eea3f6fb0ebbed09a16383 Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/cdef485217d30382f3bf6448c54b4401648fe3f1 Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ee38eb8cf9a7323884c2b8e0adbbeb2192d31e29 Patch