[PATCH net-next v6 8/8] net: skb: isolate skb data area allocations into a separate bucket

From: Kees Cook

Date: Tue Oct 06 2026 - 05:23:10 EST


From: Pedro Falcato <pfalcato@xxxxxxx>

SKB data area allocations (as done from alloc_skb()) use kmalloc().
These allocations can be variably sized and their contents can be more
or less controlled from userspace, which makes them useful for attackers
that want to overwrite a use-after-free'd object from the same kmalloc slab
(which often just requires the sizes to roughly match into the same kmalloc
bucket). [0] is an easy example of an exploit that uses netlink skb
allocation to target another similarly-sized accidentally freed object.

While other mitigations like CONFIG_RANDOM_KMALLOC_CACHES exist, these are
probabilistic. Use the existing kmem buckets API to further isolate these
allocations in a guaranteed fashion, when CONFIG_SLAB_BUCKETS=y.

AF_UNIX sets sk_allocation to GFP_KERNEL_ACCOUNT, and those skb data
areas, the ones most worth isolating, stay in the set, where memcg
charges them as it would in the general caches. GFP_DMA falls back to
the general caches, being passed to an skb allocator only by rare
devices.

Link: https://github.com/google/security-research/blob/master/pocs/linux/kernelctf/CVE-2023-4207_lts_cos_mitigation_2/docs/exploit.md [0]
Reviewed-by: Kees Cook <kees@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Pedro Falcato <pfalcato@xxxxxxx>
Acked-by: Paolo Abeni <pabeni@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <kees@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
net/core/skbuff.c | 10 +++++++---
1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/net/core/skbuff.c b/net/core/skbuff.c
index 966af3beed94..6f6b5f4cb39f 100644
--- a/net/core/skbuff.c
+++ b/net/core/skbuff.c
@@ -586,6 +586,8 @@ struct sk_buff *napi_build_skb(void *data, unsigned int frag_size)
}
EXPORT_SYMBOL(napi_build_skb);

+static kmem_buckets *skb_data_buckets __ro_after_init;
+
static void *kmalloc_pfmemalloc(size_t obj_size, gfp_t flags, int node)
{
if (!gfp_pfmemalloc_allowed(flags))
@@ -593,11 +595,12 @@ static void *kmalloc_pfmemalloc(size_t obj_size, gfp_t flags, int node)
if (!obj_size)
return kmem_cache_alloc_node(net_hotdata.skb_small_head_cache,
flags, node);
- return kmalloc_node_track_caller(obj_size, flags, node);
+ return kmem_buckets_alloc_node_track_caller(skb_data_buckets, obj_size,
+ flags, node);
}

/*
- * kmalloc_reserve is a wrapper around kmalloc_node_track_caller that tells
+ * kmalloc_reserve is a wrapper around a caller-tracked kmalloc that tells
* the caller if emergency pfmemalloc reserves are being used. If it is and
* the socket is later found to be SOCK_MEMALLOC then PFMEMALLOC reserves
* may be used. Otherwise, the packet data may be discarded until enough
@@ -634,7 +637,7 @@ static void *kmalloc_reserve(unsigned int *size, gfp_t flags, int node,
* Try a regular allocation, when that fails and we're not entitled
* to the reserves, fail.
*/
- obj = kmalloc_node_track_caller(obj_size,
+ obj = kmem_buckets_alloc_node_track_caller(skb_data_buckets, obj_size,
flags | __GFP_NOMEMALLOC | __GFP_NOWARN,
node);
if (likely(obj))
@@ -5235,6 +5238,7 @@ void __init skb_init(void)
0,
SKB_SMALL_HEAD_HEADROOM,
NULL);
+ skb_data_buckets = kmem_buckets_create("skb_data", 0, INT_MAX);
skb_extensions_init();
}

--
2.55.0