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CVE-2024-38610: linux kernel vulnerability
CVE-2024-38610: high vulnerability affecting linux kernel. Check CVSS, KEV status, business impact and recommended administrator actions.
- CVSS
- 7.8 HIGH
- EPSS
- 11.75%
- Known exploited
- not in KEV
- Product
- linux kernel
What is known
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: drivers/virt/acrn: fix PFNMAP PTE checks in acrn_vm_ram_map() Patch series "mm: follow_pte() improvements and acrn follow_pte() fixes". Patch #1 fixes a bunch of issues I spotted in the acrn driver. It compiles, that's all I know. I'll appreciate some review and testing from acrn folks. Patch #2+#3 improve follow_pte(), passing a VMA instead of the MM, adding more sanity checks, and improving the documentation. Gave it a quick test on x86-64 using VM_PAT that ends up using follow_pte(). This patch (of 3): We currently miss handling various cases, resulting in a dangerous follow_pte() (previously follow_pfn()) usage. (1) We're not checking PTE write permissions. Maybe we should simply always require pte_write() like we do for pin_user_pages_fast(FOLL_WRITE)? Hard to tell, so let's check for ACRN_MEM_ACCESS_WRITE for now. (2) We're not rejecting refcounted pages. As we are not using MMU notifiers, messing with refcounted pages is dangerous and can result in use-after-free. Let's make sure to reject them. (3) We are only looking at the first PTE of a bigger range. We only lookup a single PTE, but memmap->len may span a larger area. Let's loop over all involved PTEs and make sure the PFN range is actually contiguous. Reject everything else: it couldn't have worked either way, and rather made use access PFNs we shouldn't be accessing.
Business impact
Successful exploitation of CVE-2024-38610, a high vulnerability (CVSS 7.8) affecting linux kernel, may affect the confidentiality, integrity or availability of the vulnerable environment. The exact impact depends on the installed version, exposed interfaces and deployment configuration.
Recommended administrator action
Confirm whether linux kernel is present and compare installed versions with the vendor advisory and NVD record. Apply the vendor patch or documented mitigation; until remediation is complete, reduce exposure of affected interfaces, review relevant logs and monitor for indicators of exploitation. DataHouse can support version verification, managed patching, network exposure reduction, log review and backup validation for dedicated, cloud and colocated environments.