CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2024-53121 — Linux Linux Kernel security vulnerability

Medium CVSS 5.5

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net/mlx5: fs, lock FTE when checking if active The referenced commits introduced a two-step process for deleting FTEs: - Lock the FTE, delete it from hardware, set the hardware deletion function to NULL and unlock the FTE. - Lock the parent flow group, delete the software copy of the FTE, and remove it from the xarray. However, this approach encounters a race condition if a rule with the same match value is added simultaneously. In this scenario, fs_core may set the hardware deletion function to NULL prematurely, causing a panic during subsequent rule deletions. To prevent this, ensure the active flag of the FTE is checked under a lock, which will prevent the fs_core layer from attaching a new steering rule to an FTE that is in the process of deletion. [ 438.967589] MOSHE: 2496 mlx5_del_flow_rules del_hw_func [ 438.968205] ------------[ cut here ]------------ [ 438.968654] refcount_t: decrement hit 0; leaking memory. [ 438.969249] WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 8957 at lib/refcount.c:31 refcount_warn_saturate+0xfb/0x110 [ 438.970054] Modules linked in: act_mirred cls_flower act_gact sch_ingress openvswitch nsh mlx5_vdpa vri…

Severity
Medium
CVSS
5.5 (3.1)
Published
2024-12-02
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
linux/kernel
Weaknesses
CWE-362

Affected products

  • linux / linux_kernel
  • linux / linux_kernel / 6.12

Showing 2 representative product identities from 10 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

Race condition, TOCTOU, and lifecycle synchronization

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

Check exposure

  • Map concurrent actors, shared state, lock boundaries, signals, callbacks, retries, and check-then-use sequences in the affected path.
  • Determine whether untrusted users can influence timing, object names, filesystem state, or repeated state transitions.
  • Identify clustered and multi-process behavior that repository-local tests may not represent.

Remediate safely

  • Make the sensitive state transition atomic or protect it with a consistently ordered synchronization primitive.
  • Perform authorization and invariant checks on the same authoritative object and transaction used for the operation.
  • Use unique private resources, safe ownership transfer, and idempotent operations; add deterministic concurrency regression tests.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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