Junglewise Threat Intelligence

CVE-2024-38598: Linux Kernel soft lockup in MD RAID10 resync

CVE-2024-38598 · Severity: medium · CVSS 5.5 · Published 2024-06-19

Technologies: Linux Kernel. Vendors: Linux.

Executive brief

A vulnerability in the Linux kernel's RAID management system can cause a system to freeze or become unresponsive (soft lockup) during storage synchronization tasks. This occurs when a storage array is resized or synchronized while using specific RAID configurations. An attacker or a system error could trigger this state, leading to a denial of service that disrupts business operations and data availability.

Technical details

A regression in the Linux kernel's MD (Multiple Device) driver, specifically within the RAID10 implementation, causes a soft lockup during resync operations. The root cause is located in 'md_bitmap_get_counter()', which was modified in a previous commit to return early without properly setting the 'blocks' return value. When 'md_do_sync' calls 'raid10_sync_request', the lack of updated block counts results in an infinite loop where the sector offset 'j' never increments. This vulnerability is triggered during 'dm-raid10' operations such as 'lvextend' followed by a sync action. Patches have been released across multiple stable kernel branches to ensure 'blocks' is always initialized.

Affected products

  • Linux Linux Kernel 4.19.291 to 4.19.316, 5.4.251 to 5.4.278, 5.10.188 to 5.10.219, 5.15.121 to 5.15.161, 6.1.39 to 6.1.93, 6.5 to 6.6.33, 6.7 to 6.8.12, 6.9 to 6.9.3

Timeline

  • 2024-06-19: advisory: CVE published by NVD
  • 2024-06-16: patched: Fixes committed to various stable kernel trees

References

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