CVEvulnerability
CVE-2023-53585
5.5 MEDIUM
Official page ↗
- Status
- Analyzed
- Published
- 2025-10-04
- 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
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
bpf: reject unhashed sockets in bpf_sk_assign
The semantics for bpf_sk_assign are as follows:
sk = some_lookup_func()
bpf_sk_assign(skb, sk)
bpf_sk_release(sk)
That is, the sk is not consumed by bpf_sk_assign. The function
therefore needs to make sure that sk lives long enough to be
consumed from __inet_lookup_skb. The path through the stack for a
TCPv4 packet is roughly:
netif_receive_skb_core: takes RCU read lock
__netif_receive_skb_core:
sch_handle_ingress:
tcf_classify:
bpf_sk_assign()
deliver_ptype_list_skb:
deliver_skb:
ip_packet_type->func == ip_rcv:
ip_rcv_core:
ip_rcv_finish_core:
dst_input:
ip_local_deliver:
ip_local_deliver_finish:
ip_protocol_deliver_rcu:
tcp_v4_rcv:
__inet_lookup_skb:
skb_steal_sock
The existing helper takes advantage of the fact that everything
happens in the same RCU critical section: for sockets with
SOCK_RCU_FREE set bpf_sk_assign never takes a reference.
skb_steal_sock then checks SOCK_RCU_FREE again and does sock_put
if necessary.
This approach assumes that SOCK_RCU_FREE is never set on a sk
between bpf_sk_assign and skb_steal_sock, but this invariant is
violated by unhashed UDP sockets. A new UDP socket is created
in TCP_CLOSE state but without SOCK_RCU_FREE set. That flag is only
added in udp_lib_get_port() which happens when a socket is bound.
When bpf_sk_assign was added it wasn't possible to access unhashed
UDP sockets from BPF, so this wasn't a problem. This changed
in commit 0c48eefae712 ("sock_map: Lift socket state restriction
for datagram sockets"), but the helper wasn't adjusted accordingly.
The following sequence of events will therefore lead to a refcount
leak:
1. Add socket(AF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM) to a sockmap.
2. Pull socket out of sockmap and bpf_sk_assign it. Since
SOCK_RCU_FREE is not set we increment the refcount.
3. bind() or connect() the socket, setting SOCK_RCU_FREE.
4. skb_steal_sock will now set refcounted = false due to
SOCK_RCU_FREE.
5. tcp_v4_rcv() skips sock_put().
Fix the problem by rejecting unhashed sockets in bpf_sk_assign().
This matches the behaviour of __inet_lookup_skb which is ultimately
the goal of bpf_sk_assign().
Affected configurations
• linux linux kernel (>= 5.7 < 5.10.195)
• linux linux kernel (>= 5.11 < 5.15.132)
• linux linux kernel (>= 5.16 < 6.1.53)
• linux linux kernel (>= 6.2 < 6.4.16)
• linux linux kernel (>= 6.5 < 6.5.3)
References
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3d4522f59fb748a54446846522941a4f09da63e9 Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/67312adc96b5a585970d03b62412847afe2c6b01 Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/791a12102e5191dcb6ce0b3a99d71b5a2802d12a Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7dcbc0bb0e5cc1823923744befce59ac353135e6 Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/8aa43cfbb68b25119d2ced14ec717173e2901fa2 Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c0ce0fb76610d5fad31f56f2ca8241a2a6717a1b Patch