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:
- Run:
- Watch
sudo slabtop -o | grep ip6_dst_cacheto see memory usage increase
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