Re: [PATCH] zram: fix use-after-free in zram_writeback_endio

From: Sergey Senozhatsky

Date: Thu May 07 2026 - 22:40:59 EST


On (26/05/07 15:56), Minchan Kim wrote:
> > - while (atomic_read(&wb_ctl->num_inflight) > 0) {
> > - wait_event(wb_ctl->done_wait, !list_empty(&wb_ctl->done_reqs));
> > + while (atomic_read(&wb_ctl->num_inflight) ||
> > + !list_empty(&wb_ctl->done_reqs)) {
> > + wait_event_timeout(wb_ctl->done_wait,
> > + !list_empty(&wb_ctl->done_reqs),
> > + HZ);
> > err = zram_complete_done_reqs(zram, wb_ctl);
> > if (err)
> > ret = err;
>
> I understand why you used a timeout here, but I still don't think it's a good
> idea since the user could wait for up to a second unnecessarily during the
> race.

Well, sure, it doesn't have to be a full HZ, we only need to wait
for propagation of atomic_dec() from another CPU. That's very fast,
orders of magniter faster than a full second. Just saying.

> diff --git a/drivers/block/zram/zram_drv.c b/drivers/block/zram/zram_drv.c
> index a324ede6206d..28ab4a24e77f 100644
> --- a/drivers/block/zram/zram_drv.c
> +++ b/drivers/block/zram/zram_drv.c
> @@ -33,6 +33,7 @@
> #include <linux/cpuhotplug.h>
> #include <linux/part_stat.h>
> #include <linux/kernel_read_file.h>
> +#include <linux/kref.h>
>
> #include "zram_drv.h"
>
> @@ -504,6 +505,7 @@ struct zram_wb_ctl {
> wait_queue_head_t done_wait;
> spinlock_t done_lock;
> atomic_t num_inflight;
> + struct kref kref;
> };

Yeah okay, it overlaps with ->num_inflight, but we can live with that.
Maybe can get rod of ->num_inflight in future patches.

[..]
> @@ -864,6 +875,7 @@ static struct zram_wb_ctl *init_wb_ctl(struct zram *zram)
> atomic_set(&wb_ctl->num_inflight, 0);
> init_waitqueue_head(&wb_ctl->done_wait);
> spin_lock_init(&wb_ctl->done_lock);
> + kref_init(&wb_ctl->kref);
>
> for (i = 0; i < zram->wb_batch_size; i++) {
> struct zram_wb_req *req;
> @@ -985,6 +997,7 @@ static void zram_writeback_endio(struct bio *bio)
> spin_unlock_irqrestore(&wb_ctl->done_lock, flags);
>
> wake_up(&wb_ctl->done_wait);
> + kref_put(&wb_ctl->kref, release_wb_ctl_kref);
> }
>
>
> static void zram_submit_wb_request(struct zram *zram,
> @@ -996,6 +1009,7 @@ static void zram_submit_wb_request(struct zram *zram,
> * so that we don't over-submit.
> */
> zram_account_writeback_submit(zram);
> + kref_get(&wb_ctl->kref);
> atomic_inc(&wb_ctl->num_inflight);
> req->bio.bi_private = wb_ctl;
> submit_bio(&req->bio);
> @@ -1276,8 +1290,8 @@ static ssize_t writeback_store(struct device *dev,
>
> wb_ctl = init_wb_ctl(zram);
> if (!wb_ctl) {
> - ret = -ENOMEM;
> - goto out;
> + release_pp_ctl(zram, pp_ctl);
> + return -ENOMEM;
> }
>
> args = skip_spaces(buf);

So I think we also need to do kref_put(&wb_ctl->kref, release_wb_ctl_kref)
at the end of writeback_store(), because otherwise it just kfree()
wb_ctl and we have the same race condition:

@@ -1330,7 +1340,7 @@ static ssize_t writeback_store(struct device *dev,

out:
release_pp_ctl(zram, pp_ctl);
- release_wb_ctl(wb_ctl);
+ kref_put(&wb_ctl->kref, release_wb_ctl_kref);

return ret;
}

And indirect release in init_wb_ctl() as well:

@@ -895,7 +903,7 @@ static struct zram_wb_ctl *init_wb_ctl(struct zram *zram)
return wb_ctl;

release_wb_ctl:
- release_wb_ctl(wb_ctl);
+ kref_put(&wb_ctl->kref, release_wb_ctl_kref);
return NULL;
}