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Fencer Vulns
high 7.8

CVE-2021-47011 json

mm: memcontrol: slab: fix obtain a reference to a freeing memcg

published 2024-02-28 2 y ago modified 2026-08-05 3 mo ago also EUVD-2021-33659

cvss
7.8
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.3%
EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 16%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

mm: memcontrol: slab: fix obtain a reference to a freeing memcg

Patch series "Use obj_cgroup APIs to charge kmem pages", v5.

Since Roman's series "The new cgroup slab memory controller" applied. All slab objects are charged with the new APIs of obj_cgroup. The new APIs introduce a struct obj_cgroup to charge slab objects. It prevents long-living objects from pinning the original memory cgroup in the memory. But there are still some corner objects (e.g. allocations larger than order-1 page on SLUB) which are not charged with the new APIs. Those objects (include the pages which are allocated from buddy allocator directly) are charged as kmem pages which still hold a reference to the memory cgroup.

E.g. We know that the kernel stack is charged as kmem pages because the size of the kernel stack can be greater than 2 pages (e.g. 16KB on x86_64 or arm64). If we create a thread (suppose the thread stack is charged to memory cgroup A) and then move it from memory cgroup A to memory cgroup B. Because the kernel stack of the thread hold a reference to the memory cgroup A. The thread can pin the memory cgroup A in the memory even if we remove the cgroup A. If we want to see this scenario by using the following script. We can see that the system has added 500 dying cgroups (This is not a real world issue, just a script to show that the large kmallocs are charged as kmem pages which can pin the memory cgroup in the memory).

#!/bin/bash

cat /proc/cgroups | grep memory

cd /sys/fs/cgroup/memory echo 1 > memory.move_charge_at_immigrate

for i in range{1..500} do mkdir kmem_test echo $$ > kmem_test/cgroup.procs sleep 3600 & echo $$ > cgroup.procs echo `cat kmem_test/cgroup.procs` > cgroup.procs rmdir kmem_test done

cat /proc/cgroups | grep memory

This patchset aims to make those kmem pages to drop the reference to memory cgroup by using the APIs of obj_cgroup. Finally, we can see that the number of the dying cgroups will not increase if we run the above test script.

This patch (of 7):

The rcu_read_lock/unlock only can guarantee that the memcg will not be freed, but it cannot guarantee the success of css_get (which is in the refill_stock when cached memcg changed) to memcg.

rcu_read_lock() memcg = obj_cgroup_memcg(old) __memcg_kmem_uncharge(memcg) refill_stock(memcg) if (stock->cached != memcg) // css_get can change the ref counter from 0 back to 1. css_get(&memcg->css) rcu_read_unlock()

This fix is very like the commit:

eefbfa7fd678 ("mm: memcg/slab: fix use after free in obj_cgroup_charge")

Fix this by holding a reference to the memcg which is passed to the __memcg_kmem_uncharge() before calling __memcg_kmem_uncharge().

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 5.10.37, 5.11.21, 5.12.4, 5.13
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 5.10.38-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2021-47011

  • kernel RHEL 8 4.18.0-348.el8
  • perf RHEL 8 4.18.0-348.el8
  • bpftool RHEL 8 4.18.0-348.el8
  • kernel-core RHEL 8 4.18.0-348.el8
  • kernel-tools RHEL 8 4.18.0-348.el8
  • python3-perf RHEL 8 4.18.0-348.el8
  • kernel-modules RHEL 8 4.18.0-348.el8
  • kernel-zfcpdump RHEL 8 4.18.0-348.el8

red hat advisories RHSA-2021:4356

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2021-47011 updated cvss 7.1

kernel: mm: memcontrol: slab: fix obtain a reference to a freeing memcg

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 kernel-rt, kernel-rt-kvm, kernel-rt-core, kernel-rt-modules, kernel-rt-debug-kvm, kernel-rt-debug-core, +6 more
    affected: no fix available
  • Red Hat CodeReady Linux Builder (v. 8) kernel-debuginfo-common-x86_64 4.18.0-348.el8, kernel-debuginfo-common-aarch64 4.18.0-348.el8, kernel-debuginfo-common-ppc64le 4.18.0-348.el8 Red Hat Enterprise Linux BaseOS (v. 8) perf 4.18.0-348.el8, kernel 4.18.0-348.el8, bpftool 4.18.0-348.el8, kernel-core 4.18.0-348.el8, kernel-tools 4.18.0-348.el8, python3-perf 4.18.0-348.el8, +15 more
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2021:4356
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
2 y ago

Exploit prediction

0.25% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 16% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 7.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.