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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2024-35873 json

riscv: Fix vector state restore in rt_sigreturn()

published 2024-05-19 2 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2024-35591

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 9%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

riscv: Fix vector state restore in rt_sigreturn()

The RISC-V Vector specification states in "Appendix D: Calling Convention for Vector State" [1] that "Executing a system call causes all caller-saved vector registers (v0-v31, vl, vtype) and vstart to become unspecified.". In the RISC-V kernel this is called "discarding the vstate".

Returning from a signal handler via the rt_sigreturn() syscall, vector discard is also performed. However, this is not an issue since the vector state should be restored from the sigcontext, and therefore not care about the vector discard.

The "live state" is the actual vector register in the running context, and the "vstate" is the vector state of the task. A dirty live state, means that the vstate and live state are not in synch.

When vectorized user_from_copy() was introduced, an bug sneaked in at the restoration code, related to the discard of the live state.

An example when this go wrong:

1. A userland application is executing vector code 2. The application receives a signal, and the signal handler is entered. 3. The application returns from the signal handler, using the rt_sigreturn() syscall. 4. The live vector state is discarded upon entering the rt_sigreturn(), and the live state is marked as "dirty", indicating that the live state need to be synchronized with the current vstate. 5. rt_sigreturn() restores the vstate, except the Vector registers, from the sigcontext 6. rt_sigreturn() restores the Vector registers, from the sigcontext, and now the vectorized user_from_copy() is used. The dirty live state from the discard is saved to the vstate, making the vstate corrupt. 7. rt_sigreturn() returns to the application, which crashes due to corrupted vstate.

Note that the vectorized user_from_copy() is invoked depending on the value of CONFIG_RISCV_ISA_V_UCOPY_THRESHOLD. Default is 768, which means that vlen has to be larger than 128b for this bug to trigger.

The fix is simply to mark the live state as non-dirty/clean prior performing the vstate restore.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.8.5, 6.9
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13 6.8.9-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2024-35873

  • linux Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-38.38
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1011.12
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1010.11
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1006.9
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1008.8
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1010.10
  • linux-intel Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1007.14
  • linux-raspi Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1007.7

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2024-35873

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

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-2024-35873 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: riscv: Fix vector state restore in rt_sigreturn()

  • 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 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
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
2 y ago

Exploit prediction

0.20% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 9% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
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

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