CVE-2024-38610

HIGH
Published Jun 19, 2024 Modified Sep 17, 2025 CWE-416

Description

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.

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CVSS v3.1 Score

7.8
HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Weakness Type (CWE)

CWE-416 Use After Free

Affected Products

Vendor Product
linux linux_kernel
linux linux_kernel
linux linux_kernel
linux linux_kernel
linux linux_kernel
linux linux_kernel

References

Advisories & Patches

https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2c8d6e24930b8ef7d4a81787627c559ae0e0d3bb https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3d6586008f7b638f91f3332602592caa8b00b559 https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4c4ba3cf3a15ccfbaf787d0296fa42cdb00da9b4 https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/5c6705aa47b5b78d7ad36fea832bb69caa5bf49a https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/afeb0e69627695f759fc73c39c1640dbf8649b32 https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e873f36ec890bece26ecce850e969917bceebbb6 https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2c8d6e24930b8ef7d4a81787627c559ae0e0d3bb https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3d6586008f7b638f91f3332602592caa8b00b559 https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4c4ba3cf3a15ccfbaf787d0296fa42cdb00da9b4 https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/5c6705aa47b5b78d7ad36fea832bb69caa5bf49a https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/afeb0e69627695f759fc73c39c1640dbf8649b32 https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e873f36ec890bece26ecce850e969917bceebbb6

Frequently Asked Questions

What is CVE-2024-38610? +
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. It has a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.8 (HIGH).
How severe is CVE-2024-38610? +
CVE-2024-38610 has a CVSS v3.1 score of 7.8 out of 10, rated HIGH. This is a high-severity vulnerability that should be prioritized for patching.
What products are affected by CVE-2024-38610? +
CVE-2024-38610 affects products from linux, specifically: linux_kernel. Check the affected products table above for specific version ranges.
How do I check if I'm vulnerable to CVE-2024-38610? +
You can use Secably's free Website Scanner to check your website for known vulnerabilities. For infrastructure scanning, use the Port Scanner to identify exposed services that may be affected. Check the vendor advisories linked above for specific patch and version information.

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