Re: [PATCH] netrom: Prevent race conditions between multiple add route

Dan Carpenter
2025-10-20T10:10:15Z

On Mon, Oct 20, 2025 at 04:13:59PM +0800, Lizhi Xu wrote:
> The root cause of the problem is that multiple different tasks initiate
> NETROM_NODE commands to add new routes, there is no lock between them to
> protect the same nr_neigh.
> Task0 may add the nr_neigh.refcount value of 1 on Task1 to routes[2].
> When Task3 executes nr_neigh_put(nr_node->routes[2].neighbour), it will

s/Task3/Task1/

> release the neighbour because its refcount value is 1.
>

The refcount would be 2 and then drop to zero. Both nr_neigh_put() and
nr_remove_neigh() drop the refcount.

> In this case, the following situation causes a UAF:
>
> Task0 Task1
> ===== =====
> nr_add_node()
> nr_neigh_get_dev() nr_add_node()
> nr_node->routes[2].neighbour->count--

Does this line really matter in terms of the use after free?

> nr_neigh_put(nr_node->routes[2].neighbour);
> nr_remove_neigh(nr_node->routes[2].neighbour)
> nr_node->routes[2].neighbour = nr_neigh
> nr_neigh_hold(nr_neigh);

This chart is confusing. It says that that the nr_neigh_hold() is the use
after free. But we called nr_remove_neigh(nr_node->routes[2].neighbour)
before we assigned nr_node->routes[2].neighbour = nr_neigh...

The sysbot report says that the free happens on:

r_neigh_put(nr_node->routes[2].neighbour);

and the use after free happens on the next line:

if (nr_node->routes[2].neighbour->count == 0 && !nr_node->routes[2].neighbour->locked)

Which does suggest that somewhere the refcount is 1 when it should be
at least 2... It could be that two threads call nr_neigh_put() at
basically the same time, but that doesn't make sense either because
we're holding the nr_node_lock(nr_node)...

regards,
dan carpenter