Medium CVSS 5.5

Overview

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

net: stmmac: TSO: Fix unbalanced DMA map/unmap for non-paged SKB data

In case the non-paged data of a SKB carries protocol header and protocol
payload to be transmitted on a certain platform that the DMA AXI address
width is configured to 40-bit/48-bit, or the size of the non-paged data
is bigger than TSO_MAX_BUFF_SIZE on a certain platform that the DMA AXI
address width is configured to 32-bit, then this SKB requires at least
two DMA transmit descriptors to serve it.

For example, three descriptors are allocated to split one DMA buffer
mapped from one piece of non-paged data:
dma_desc[N + 0],
dma_desc[N + 1],
dma_desc[N + 2].
Then three elements of tx_q->tx_skbuff_dma[] will be allocated to hold
extra information to be reused in stmmac_tx_clean():
tx_q->tx_skbuff_dma[N + 0],
tx_q->tx_skbuff_dma[N + 1],
tx_q->tx_skbuff_dma[N + 2].
Now we focus on tx_q->tx_skbuff_dma[entry].buf, which is the DMA buffer
address returned by DMA mapping call. stmmac_tx_clean() will try to
unmap the DMA buffer _ONLY_IF_ tx_q->tx_skbuff_dma[entry].buf
is a valid buffer address.

The expected behavior that saves DMA buffer address of this non-paged
data to tx_q->tx_skbuff_dma[entry].buf is:
tx_q->tx_skbuff_dma[N + 0].buf = NULL;
tx_q->tx_skbuff_dma[N + 1].buf = NULL;
tx_q->tx_skbuff_dma[N + 2].buf = dma_map_single();
Unfortunately, the current code misbehaves like this:
tx_q->tx_skbuff_dma[N + 0].buf = dma_map_single();
tx_q->tx_skbuff_dma[N + 1].buf = NULL;
tx_q->tx_skbuff_dma[N + 2].buf = NULL;

On the stmmac_tx_clean() side, when dma_desc[N + 0] is closed by the
DMA engine, tx_q->tx_skbuff_dma[N + 0].buf is a valid buffer address
obviously, then the DMA buffer will be unmapped immediately.
There may be a rare case that the DMA engine does not finish the
pending dma_desc[N + 1], dma_desc[N + 2] yet. Now things will go
horribly wrong, DMA is going to access a unmapped/unreferenced memory
region, corrupted data will be transmited or iommu fault will be
triggered :(

In contrast, the for-loop that maps SKB fragments behaves perfectly
as expected, and that is how the driver should do for both non-paged
data and paged frags actually.

This patch corrects DMA map/unmap sequences by fixing the array index
for tx_q->tx_skbuff_dma[entry].buf when assigning DMA buffer address.

Tested and verified on DWXGMAC CORE 3.20a

Risk analysis

This vulnerability is rated 🟡 MEDIUM.

  • CVSS: 5.5 (MEDIUM)
  • Detected tags: none (tag impact: LOW)

Recommended actions:

  • Prioritize remediation based on business criticality and exposure.
  • Limit exposure and increase monitoring until fixed.

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