batman-adv: Drop unmanaged ELP metric worker (Linux Linux)

CVE-2025-21823
HIGH 7.8

At a glance

Source
NVD
EPSS
EPSS 0.24 % · percentile 15 ()
State
PUBLISHED
Published
Updated
Assigner
Linux
NVD status
Modified

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: batman-adv: Drop unmanaged ELP metric worker The ELP worker needs to calculate new metric values for all neighbors "reachable" over an interface. Some of the used metric sources require locks which might need to sleep. This sleep is incompatible with the RCU list iterator used for the recorded neighbors. The initial approach to work around of this problem was to queue another work item per neighbor and then run this in a new context. Even when this solved the RCU vs might_sleep() conflict, it has a major problems: Nothing was stopping the work item in case it is not needed anymore - for example because one of the related interfaces was removed or the batman-adv module was unloaded - resulting in potential invalid memory accesses. Directly canceling the metric worker also has various problems: * cancel_work_sync for a to-be-deactivated interface is called with rtnl_lock held. But the code in the ELP metric worker also tries to use rtnl_lock() - which will never return in this case. This also means that cancel_work_sync would never return because it is waiting for the worker to finish. * iterating over the neighbor list for the to-be-deactivated interface is currently done using the RCU specific methods. Which means that it is possible to miss items when iterating over it without the associated spinlock - a behaviour which is acceptable for a periodic metric check but not for a cleanup routine (which must "stop" all still running workers) The better approch is to get rid of the per interface neighbor metric worker and handle everything in the interface worker. The original problems are solved by: * creating a list of neighbors which require new metric information inside the RCU protected context, gathering the metric according to the new list outside the RCU protected context * only use rcu_trylock inside metric gathering code to avoid a deadlock when the cancel_delayed_work_sync is called in the interface removal code (which is called with the rtnl_lock held)

References

Scores

VersionScoreVectorScored by
CVSS 3.1HIGH 7.8CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HLinux
CVSS 3.1HIGH 7.8CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HNVD · 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67 (Secondary)
CVSS 3.1MEDIUM 5.5CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HNVD · nvd@nist.gov (Primary)

European references

CERT-FR advisories

Affected configurations (NVD CPE)

Affected products

ProductVersions
Linux · Linuxaffected c833484e5f3872a38fe232c663586069d5ad9645 < 1c334629176c2d644befc31a20d4bf75542f7631 ; affected c833484e5f3872a38fe232c663586069d5ad9645 < a0019971f340ae02ba54cf1861f72da7e03e6b66 ; affected c833484e5f3872a38fe232c663586069d5ad9645 < 3c0e0aecb78cb2a2ca1dc701982d08fedb088dc6 ; affected c833484e5f3872a38fe232c663586069d5ad9645 < 781a06fd265a8151f7601122d9c2e985663828ff ; affected c833484e5f3872a38fe232c663586069d5ad9645 < a7aa2317285806640c844acd4cd2cd768e395264 ; affected c833484e5f3872a38fe232c663586069d5ad9645 < 0fdc3c166ac17b26014313fa2b93696354511b24
Linux · Linuxaffected 4.6 ; unaffected 0 < 4.6 ; unaffected 5.4.291 ≤ 5.4.* ; unaffected 5.10.235 ≤ 5.10.* ; unaffected 5.15.179 ≤ 5.15.* ; unaffected 6.1.129 ≤ 6.1.*

Sources

SourceLicence
CVE List (CVEProject cvelistV5)CVE Program Terms of Use
EPSS (FIRST.org)FIRST — attribution requested
ENISA EUVDENISA — reproduction authorised, source acknowledged
CERT-FR (ANSSI)Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0
NVD (NIST) via fkie-cad/nvd-json-data-feedsPublic domain — this product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD