CVE-2024-46828

sched: sch_cake: fix bulk flow accounting logic for host fairness

HIGH
7.8
CVSS Score
Published: September 27, 2024 at 12:39 PM UTC
Updated: August 5, 2026 at 12:04 PM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorLinux Kernel

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Severity
HIGH7.8
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.3%
SSVC
No known exploit

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: sched: sch_cake: fix bulk flow accounting logic for host fairness In sch_cake, we keep track of the count of active bulk flows per host, when running in dst/src host fairness mode, which is used as the round-robin weight when iterating through flows. The count of active bulk flows is updated whenever a flow changes state. This has a peculiar interaction with the hash collision handling: when a hash collision occurs (after the set-associative hashing), the state of the hash bucket is simply updated to match the new packet that collided, and if host fairness is enabled, that also means assigning new per-host state to the flow. For this reason, the bulk flow counters of the host(s) assigned to the flow are decremented, before new state is assigned (and the counters, which may not belong to the same host anymore, are incremented again). Back when this code was introduced, the host fairness mode was always enabled, so the decrement was unconditional. When the configuration flags were introduced the *increment* was made conditional, but the *decrement* was not. Which of course can lead to a spurious decrement (and associated wrap-around to U16_MAX). AFAICT, when host fairness is disabled, the decrement and wrap-around happens as soon as a hash collision occurs (which is not that common in itself, due to the set-associative hashing). However, in most cases this is harmless, as the value is only used when host fairness mode is enabled. So in order to trigger an array overflow, sch_cake has to first be configured with host fairness disabled, and while running in this mode, a hash collision has to occur to cause the overflow. Then, the qdisc has to be reconfigured to enable host fairness, which leads to the array out-of-bounds because the wrapped-around value is retained and used as an array index. It seems that syzbot managed to trigger this, which is quite impressive in its own right. This patch fixes the issue by introducing the same conditional check on decrement as is used on increment. The original bug predates the upstreaming of cake, but the commit listed in the Fixes tag touched that code, meaning that this patch won't apply before that.

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

5.1 ≤ v < 5.10.2265.1 ≤ v < 5.15.1675.1 ≤ v < 5.4.2845.1 ≤ v < 6.1.1105.1 ≤ v < 6.10.105.1 ≤ v < 6.115.1 ≤ v < 6.6.515.10 ≤ v < 5.10.2265.15 ≤ v < 5.15.1676.1 ≤ v < 6.1.1106.10 ≤ v < 6.10.106.6 ≤ v < 6.6.516.11 rc16.11 rc26.11 rc36.11 rc46.11 rc56.11 rc6712639929912c5eefb09facccb48d55b3f72c9f8
Vendor states this is fixed in 4a4eeefa514db570be025ab46d779af180e2c9bb (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 546ea84d07e3e324644025e2aae2d12ea4c5896e (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 549e407569e08459d16122341d332cb508024094 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 7725152b54d295b7da5e34c2f419539b30d017bd (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in cde71a5677971f4f1b69b25e854891dbe78066a4 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in d4a9039a7b3d8005b90c7b1a55a306444f0e5447 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in d7c01c0714c04431b5e18cf17a9ea68a553d1c3c (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 5.1 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 5.10.226 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 5.15.167 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 5.4.284 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 6.1.110 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 6.10.10 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 6.11 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 6.6.51 (unaffected)

References (9)

Patch
Source: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4a4eeefa514db570be025ab46d779af180e2c9bb
Patch
Source: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/546ea84d07e3e324644025e2aae2d12ea4c5896e
Patch
Source: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/549e407569e08459d16122341d332cb508024094
Patch
Source: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7725152b54d295b7da5e34c2f419539b30d017bd
Patch
Source: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/cde71a5677971f4f1b69b25e854891dbe78066a4
Patch
Source: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/d4a9039a7b3d8005b90c7b1a55a306444f0e5447
Patch
Source: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/d7c01c0714c04431b5e18cf17a9ea68a553d1c3c
Source: af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2024/10/msg00003.html

SSVC — Action Prioritization

SSVCNo known exploitNot automatablePartial impact

SSVC signals action urgency (what to patch first), separate from CVSS which measures severity.

CVSS

Attack Vector
LOCAL
Complexity
LOW
Privileges
LOW
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
HIGH
Integrity
HIGH
Availability
HIGH
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusMODIFIED
CWE
NVD-CWE-noinfo

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