[PATCH net] net/sched: act_gact, act_police: range check the fallback control action

From: hyunjungg

Date: Wed Aug 05 2026 - 05:58:22 EST


From: Hyunjung Ko <hj351016@xxxxxxxxx>

tcf_action_check_ctrlact() range checks the primary control action:

if (!opcode)
ret = action > TC_ACT_VALUE_MAX ? -EINVAL : 0;

TC_ACT_VALUE_MAX is TC_ACT_TRAP, so kernel-internal verdicts above it
cannot be set that way. But act_gact and act_police each carry a second,
independent control action supplied by user space that never reaches that
helper - TCA_GACT_PROB.paction and TCA_POLICE_RESULT. Both only reject
TC_ACT_GOTO_CHAIN, so any other value is stored verbatim and returned
verbatim from the action.

In particular user space can store TC_ACT_CONSUMED, which is
TC_ACT_VALUE_MAX + 1 and is deliberately not part of the UAPI value
range. That verdict tells every caller the action took ownership of the
skb, so nobody frees it: sch_handle_ingress(), sch_handle_egress() and
tcf_qevent_handle() all deliberately skip the free for it. The result is
one leaked sk_buff plus its data buffer per packet traversing the filter,
unbounded, for all traffic on the chain including kernel-generated
packets.

Both are trivially deterministic. act_gact clamps tcfg_pval to >= 1, so
with pval = 1 gact_determ() returns the fallback for every packet.
act_police has no mandatory rate, so rate = 0 leaves tcfp_mtu = ~0 and
tcf_police_mtu_check() always passes.

TC_ACT_CONSUMED was added by commit 720f22fed81b, after both goto-chain
guards were written (9469f375ab09 and c08f5ed5d625, Oct 2018); neither
guard was widened when the new verdict appeared.

Factor the existing range test out of tcf_action_check_ctrlact() as
tcf_action_valid() and apply it to both fallbacks. The helper cannot call
tcf_action_check_ctrlact() directly because that also allocates a
goto_chain, which is exactly what these two sites must not do.

Reproduced on v7.2-rc6: kmemleak reports one leaked 232-byte
skbuff_head_cache object plus its 704-byte data buffer per packet. With
this patch both configurations are rejected with -EINVAL and kmemleak
reports none.

Fixes: 720f22fed81b ("net: sched: refactor reinsert action")
Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx # v5.3+
Signed-off-by: Hyunjung Ko <hj351016@xxxxxxxxx>
---
include/net/act_api.h | 19 +++++++++++++++++++
net/sched/act_gact.c | 5 +++++
net/sched/act_police.c | 6 ++++++
3 files changed, 30 insertions(+)

Reproducer needs CONFIG_NET_ACT_GACT + CONFIG_GACT_PROB and
CONFIG_NET_ACT_POLICE, plus CONFIG_DEBUG_KMEMLEAK and kmemleak=on to
observe it.

The bad value cannot be set with tc(8) - iproute2 only parses symbolic
action names - so the fallback has to be planted over raw netlink:
TCA_GACT_PROB.paction = 9 with ptype = PGACT_DETERM and pval = 1, or
TCA_POLICE_RESULT = 9 with rate = 0. Attach either to a clsact ingress
chain and every packet leaks its skb.

Before, one sk_buff plus its data buffer per packet:

kmemleak: 166 new suspected memory leaks
unreferenced object 0xffff888103baadc0 (size 232):
kmem_cache_alloc_node_noprof+0x2f1/0x3e0
__alloc_skb+0xe5/0x860
alloc_skb_with_frags+0x82/0x750
sock_alloc_send_pskb+0x658/0x7e0
packet_sendmsg+0x1833/0x4860
__x64_sys_sendto+0xe0/0x1c0
do_syscall_64+0x102/0x5a0

After: both configurations are rejected at netlink time with -EINVAL
and "invalid fallback control action", and kmemleak reports no
unreferenced objects.

For the same reason tdc cannot express the bad configuration, so no
selftest accompanies this patch. A self-contained C reproducer is
available on request.

diff --git a/include/net/act_api.h b/include/net/act_api.h
index 20d9e55f8564..fd03f6319e88 100644
--- a/include/net/act_api.h
+++ b/include/net/act_api.h
@@ -270,6 +270,25 @@ int tcf_action_check_ctrlact(int action, struct tcf_proto *tp,
struct tcf_chain *tcf_action_set_ctrlact(struct tc_action *a, int action,
struct tcf_chain *newchain);

+/* Range check for a control action supplied by user space.
+ *
+ * This is the same test tcf_action_check_ctrlact() applies to the primary
+ * control action, factored out for the *fallback* control actions
+ * (act_gact's TCA_GACT_PROB.paction and act_police's TCA_POLICE_RESULT),
+ * which must not reach tcf_action_check_ctrlact() because they have no
+ * goto_chain to allocate. Without it, user space can store kernel-internal
+ * verdicts such as TC_ACT_CONSUMED, which is TC_ACT_VALUE_MAX + 1 and is
+ * deliberately not part of the UAPI value range.
+ */
+static inline bool tcf_action_valid(int action)
+{
+ int opcode = TC_ACT_EXT_OPCODE(action);
+
+ if (!opcode)
+ return action <= TC_ACT_VALUE_MAX;
+ return opcode <= TC_ACT_EXT_OPCODE_MAX || action == TC_ACT_UNSPEC;
+}
+
#ifdef CONFIG_INET
DECLARE_STATIC_KEY_FALSE(tcf_frag_xmit_count);
#endif
diff --git a/net/sched/act_gact.c b/net/sched/act_gact.c
index e949280eb800..565860cccba6 100644
--- a/net/sched/act_gact.c
+++ b/net/sched/act_gact.c
@@ -89,6 +89,11 @@ static int tcf_gact_init(struct net *net, struct nlattr *nla,
p_parm = nla_data(tb[TCA_GACT_PROB]);
if (p_parm->ptype >= MAX_RAND)
return -EINVAL;
+ if (!tcf_action_valid(p_parm->paction)) {
+ NL_SET_ERR_MSG(extack,
+ "invalid fallback control action");
+ return -EINVAL;
+ }
if (TC_ACT_EXT_CMP(p_parm->paction, TC_ACT_GOTO_CHAIN)) {
NL_SET_ERR_MSG(extack,
"goto chain not allowed on fallback");
diff --git a/net/sched/act_police.c b/net/sched/act_police.c
index b16468a98c55..ce08f6840ef7 100644
--- a/net/sched/act_police.c
+++ b/net/sched/act_police.c
@@ -128,6 +128,12 @@ static int tcf_police_init(struct net *net, struct nlattr *nla,

if (tb[TCA_POLICE_RESULT]) {
tcfp_result = nla_get_u32(tb[TCA_POLICE_RESULT]);
+ if (!tcf_action_valid(tcfp_result)) {
+ NL_SET_ERR_MSG(extack,
+ "invalid fallback control action");
+ err = -EINVAL;
+ goto failure;
+ }
if (TC_ACT_EXT_CMP(tcfp_result, TC_ACT_GOTO_CHAIN)) {
NL_SET_ERR_MSG(extack,
"goto chain not allowed on fallback");
--
2.43.0