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Fencer Vulns
critical 9.8

CVE-2021-47274 in the critical feed json

tracing: Correct the length check which causes memory corruption

published 2024-05-21 2 y ago modified 2026-08-05 3 mo ago also EUVD-2021-34279

cvss
9.8
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.8%
EPSS 0.8% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 55%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

tracing: Correct the length check which causes memory corruption

We've suffered from severe kernel crashes due to memory corruption on our production environment, like,

Call Trace: [1640542.554277] general protection fault: 0000 [#1] SMP PTI [1640542.554856] CPU: 17 PID: 26996 Comm: python Kdump: loaded Tainted:G [1640542.556629] RIP: 0010:kmem_cache_alloc+0x90/0x190 [1640542.559074] RSP: 0018:ffffb16faa597df8 EFLAGS: 00010286 [1640542.559587] RAX: 0000000000000000 RBX: 0000000000400200 RCX: 0000000006e931bf [1640542.560323] RDX: 0000000006e931be RSI: 0000000000400200 RDI: ffff9a45ff004300 [1640542.560996] RBP: 0000000000400200 R08: 0000000000023420 R09: 0000000000000000 [1640542.561670] R10: 0000000000000000 R11: 0000000000000000 R12: ffffffff9a20608d [1640542.562366] R13: ffff9a45ff004300 R14: ffff9a45ff004300 R15: 696c662f65636976 [1640542.563128] FS: 00007f45d7c6f740(0000) GS:ffff9a45ff840000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 [1640542.563937] CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 [1640542.564557] CR2: 00007f45d71311a0 CR3: 000000189d63e004 CR4: 00000000003606e0 [1640542.565279] DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000 [1640542.566069] DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000fffe0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400 [1640542.566742] Call Trace: [1640542.567009] anon_vma_clone+0x5d/0x170 [1640542.567417] __split_vma+0x91/0x1a0 [1640542.567777] do_munmap+0x2c6/0x320 [1640542.568128] vm_munmap+0x54/0x70 [1640542.569990] __x64_sys_munmap+0x22/0x30 [1640542.572005] do_syscall_64+0x5b/0x1b0 [1640542.573724] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x44/0xa9 [1640542.575642] RIP: 0033:0x7f45d6e61e27

James Wang has reproduced it stably on the latest 4.19 LTS. After some debugging, we finally proved that it's due to ftrace buffer out-of-bound access using a debug tool as follows: [ 86.775200] BUG: Out-of-bounds write at addr 0xffff88aefe8b7000 [ 86.780806] no_context+0xdf/0x3c0 [ 86.784327] __do_page_fault+0x252/0x470 [ 86.788367] do_page_fault+0x32/0x140 [ 86.792145] page_fault+0x1e/0x30 [ 86.795576] strncpy_from_unsafe+0x66/0xb0 [ 86.799789] fetch_memory_string+0x25/0x40 [ 86.804002] fetch_deref_string+0x51/0x60 [ 86.808134] kprobe_trace_func+0x32d/0x3a0 [ 86.812347] kprobe_dispatcher+0x45/0x50 [ 86.816385] kprobe_ftrace_handler+0x90/0xf0 [ 86.820779] ftrace_ops_assist_func+0xa1/0x140 [ 86.825340] 0xffffffffc00750bf [ 86.828603] do_sys_open+0x5/0x1f0 [ 86.832124] do_syscall_64+0x5b/0x1b0 [ 86.835900] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x44/0xa9

commit b220c049d519 ("tracing: Check length before giving out the filter buffer") adds length check to protect trace data overflow introduced in 0fc1b09ff1ff, seems that this fix can't prevent overflow entirely, the length check should also take the sizeof entry->array[0] into account, since this array[0] is filled the length of trace data and occupy addtional space and risk overflow.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 4.9.273, 4.14.237, 4.19.195, 5.4.126, 5.10.44, 5.12.11, 5.13
  • linux linux_kernel 2d5989027998, 3e08a9f9760f, 31ceae385556, 43c32c22254b, b16a249eca22, d63f00ec908b, edcce01e0e50
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 5.10.46-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2021-47274

  • linux Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 4.15.0-156.163
  • linux Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-81.91
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 4.15.0-1111.118
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1055.58
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1051.55
  • linux-kvm Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 4.15.0-1099.101
  • linux-kvm Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1045.47
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1056.58

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2021-47274

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • kernel-64kb SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP3-LTSS, Enterprise Storage 7.1 5.3.18-150300.59.164.1
  • kernel-syms SLES for SAP 15 SP3, SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP3-LTSS +1 more 5.3.18-150300.59.164.1
  • kernel-source SLES for SAP 15 SP3, SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP3-LTSS +1 more 5.3.18-150300.59.164.1
  • kernel-default SLES for SAP 15 SP3, SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.2 +5 more 5.3.18-150300.59.164.1
  • kernel-preempt SLES for SAP 15 SP3, SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP3-LTSS +1 more 5.3.18-150300.59.164.1
  • kernel-obs-build SLES for SAP 15 SP3, SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP3-LTSS +1 more 5.3.18-150300.59.164.1
  • kernel-default-base SLES for SAP 15 SP3, SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.2 +3 more 5.3.18-150300.59.164.1.150300.18.96.1
  • kernel-syms SLES for SAP 12 SP5, SLES 12 SP5 4.12.14-122.219.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2024:2185-1SUSE-SU-2024:2184-1SUSE-SU-2024:2183-1SUSE-SU-2024:2010-1SUSE-SU-2024:1983-1SUSE-SU-2024:1979-1

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-2021-47274 updated cvss 6.4

kernel: tracing: Correct the length check which causes memory corruption

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Red Hat has investigated whether a possible mitigation exists for this issue, and has not been able to identify a practical example. Please update the affected package as soon as possible.”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more 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
yes
Technical impact
total
Assessed
2 y ago

Exploit prediction

0.75% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 55% 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
CISA ADP 3.1 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CNA 3.1 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected products

  • Linux Linux
  • linux linux_kernel

Classification

Weakness
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.