[PATCH] net/ncsi: Fix Use-After-Free in ncsi_remove_channel/package
From: Wong Boon Jhee <hidden>
Date: 2026-08-12 16:29:56
Subsystem:
ncsi library, networking [general], the rest · Maintainers:
Samuel Mendoza-Jonas, "David S. Miller", Eric Dumazet, Jakub Kicinski, Paolo Abeni, Linus Torvalds
From af39fbef05b309b7e183690dbb7e63295ff0be5a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Wong Boon Jhee <redacted>
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:25:47 +0800
Subject: [PATCH] net/ncsi: Fix Use-After-Free in NCSI channel and package
removal
In net/ncsi/ncsi-manage.c, ncsi_remove_channel() and
ncsi_remove_package() remove objects from an RCU-protected linked list
using list_del_rcu() and immediately free them using kfree().
Because there is no call to synchronize_rcu() or kfree_rcu(), concurrent
readers traversing these lists under rcu_read_lock() (such as Netlink
dump handlers) can still hold a valid pointer to the object. When kfree()
executes, the reader is left holding a dangling pointer to freed memory,
resulting in a slab-use-after-free.
This patch fixes the issue by replacing kfree() with kfree_rcu(), which
defers the memory freeing until all pre-existing RCU readers have finished
their critical sections. To support this, a struct rcu_head has been
added to struct ncsi_channel, struct ncsi_package, and struct ncsi_dev_priv.
KASAN confirms the freed object belongs to the kmalloc-96 cache, and the
fix completely eliminates the crash.
Fixes: 2d283bdd079c ("net/ncsi: Resource management")
Signed-off-by: Wong Boon Jhee <redacted>
---
net/ncsi/internal.h | 2 ++
net/ncsi/ncsi-manage.c | 4 ++--
2 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
diff --git a/net/ncsi/internal.h b/net/ncsi/internal.h
index adee6dcabdc3..19785ca2392a 100644
--- a/net/ncsi/internal.h
+++ b/net/ncsi/internal.h@@ -239,6 +239,7 @@ struct ncsi_channel { } monitor; struct list_head node; struct list_head link; + struct rcu_head rcu; /* RCU cleanup */ }; struct ncsi_package {
@@ -253,6 +254,7 @@ struct ncsi_package { bool multi_channel; /* Enable multiple channels */ u32 channel_whitelist; /* Channels to configure */ struct ncsi_channel *preferred_channel; /* Primary channel */ + struct rcu_head rcu; /* RCU cleanup */ }; struct ncsi_request {
diff --git a/net/ncsi/ncsi-manage.c b/net/ncsi/ncsi-manage.c
index 54d0df0a9efe..368085627807 100644
--- a/net/ncsi/ncsi-manage.c
+++ b/net/ncsi/ncsi-manage.c@@ -263,7 +263,7 @@ static void ncsi_remove_channel(struct ncsi_channel *nc) np->channel_num--; spin_unlock_irqrestore(&np->lock, flags); - kfree(nc); + kfree_rcu(nc, rcu); } struct ncsi_package *ncsi_find_package(struct ncsi_dev_priv *ndp,
@@ -326,7 +326,7 @@ void ncsi_remove_package(struct ncsi_package *np) ndp->package_num--; spin_unlock_irqrestore(&ndp->lock, flags); - kfree(np); + kfree_rcu(np, rcu); } void ncsi_find_package_and_channel(struct ncsi_dev_priv *ndp,
--
2.55.0