In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
net/rds: acquire RDS_IN_XMIT in rds_tcp_reset_callbacks()
rds_tcp_reset_callbacks() quiesces the transmit path by setting the path state to RDS_CONN_RESETTING and then waiting for RDS_IN_XMIT to be sampled clear before swapping the underlying socket and calling rds_send_path_reset().
Sampling the bit clear is not the same as owning it: rds_send_xmit() can re-acquire RDS_IN_XMIT right after the wait_event() returns. Its state recheck after taking the lock is a store-buffering pattern (the resetter writes the state and reads the bit, the sender writes the bit and reads the state) and acquire_in_xmit() is only an acquire operation, so on weakly ordered architectures both sides can miss each other's write and the transmit path then runs concurrently with rds_send_path_reset() rewriting cp_xmit_* state - which is exactly what the comment above rds_send_path_reset() tells its callers to prevent.
Take the lock instead, hold it across the socket swap and rds_send_path_reset(), and release it with a wake-up at the end. The lock-ordering constraint documented above the wait still holds: the lock is acquired before lock_sock(), so a sender inside tcp_sendmsg() can never be waited on while we hold the socket lock.
Two details of the old code go away with the same change:
- t_sock is now read only after the lock is acquired. The old code
- The old !osock early path called rds_send_path_reset() with no
The in-function comment describing the old wait-based quiesce is rewritten to describe the lock-based one, and the stale block comment above the function (which still described a return value and an incomplete list of t_sock writers) is refreshed to name all four writers - the connect, accept, teardown and swap paths - and what serializes each of them.