Re: [PATCH] netfilter: fix percpu counter block leak on error path when creating new netns

From: Pablo Neira Ayuso
Date: Wed Feb 22 2023 - 04:02:17 EST


On Wed, Feb 22, 2023 at 10:11:03AM +0800, Pavel Tikhomirov wrote:
> On 22.02.2023 07:25, Pablo Neira Ayuso wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > On Mon, Feb 13, 2023 at 12:25:05PM +0800, Pavel Tikhomirov wrote:
> > > Here is the stack where we allocate percpu counter block:
> > >
> > > +-< __alloc_percpu
> > > +-< xt_percpu_counter_alloc
> > > +-< find_check_entry # {arp,ip,ip6}_tables.c
> > > +-< translate_table
> > >
> > > And it can be leaked on this code path:
> > >
> > > +-> ip6t_register_table
> > > +-> translate_table # allocates percpu counter block
> > > +-> xt_register_table # fails
> > >
> > > there is no freeing of the counter block on xt_register_table fail.
> > > Note: xt_percpu_counter_free should be called to free it like we do in
> > > do_replace through cleanup_entry helper (or in __ip6t_unregister_table).
> > >
> > > Probability of hitting this error path is low AFAICS (xt_register_table
> > > can only return ENOMEM here, as it is not replacing anything, as we are
> > > creating new netns, and it is hard to imagine that all previous
> > > allocations succeeded and after that one in xt_register_table failed).
> > > But it's worth fixing even the rare leak.
> >
> > Any suggestion as Fixes: tag here? This issue seems to be rather old?
>
>
> If I'm correct:
>
> 1) we have this exact percpu leak since commit 71ae0dff02d7
> ("netfilter: xtables: use percpu rule counters") which introduced
> the percpu allocation.
>
> 2) but we don't call cleanup_entry on this path at least since
> commit 1da177e4c3f4 ("Linux-2.6.12-rc2") which is really old.
>
> 3) I also see the same thing here https://github.com/mpe/linux-fullhistory/blame/1ab7e5ccf454483fb78998854dddd0bab398c3de/net/ipv4/netfilter/arp_tables.c#L1169
> which is probably the initiall commit which introduced
> net/ipv4/netfilter/arp_tables.c file.
>
> So I'm not sure about Fixes: tag, probably one of those three commits.

Thanks, I will pick #1 as Fixes: tag.