CVE-2023-53256

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

firmware: arm_ffa: Fix FFA device names for logical partitions

Each physical partition can provide multiple services each with UUID. Each such service can be presented as logical partition with a unique combination of VM ID and UUID. The number of distinct UUID in a system will be less than or equal to the number of logical partitions.

However, currently it fails to register more than one logical partition or service within a physical partition as the device name contains only VM ID while both VM ID and UUID are maintained in the partition information. The kernel complains with the below message:

| sysfs: cannot create duplicate filename '/devices/arm-ffa-8001' | CPU: 1 PID: 1 Comm: swapper/0 Not tainted 6.3.0-rc7 #8 | Hardware name: FVP Base RevC (DT) | Call trace: | dump_backtrace+0xf8/0x118 | show_stack+0x18/0x24 | dump_stack_lvl+0x50/0x68 | dump_stack+0x18/0x24 | sysfs_create_dir_ns+0xe0/0x13c | kobject_add_internal+0x220/0x3d4 | kobject_add+0x94/0x100 | device_add+0x144/0x5d8 | device_register+0x20/0x30 | ffa_device_register+0x88/0xd8 | ffa_setup_partitions+0x108/0x1b8 | ffa_init+0x2ec/0x3a4 | do_one_initcall+0xcc/0x240 | do_initcall_level+0x8c/0xac | do_initcalls+0x54/0x94 | do_basic_setup+0x1c/0x28 | kernel_init_freeable+0x100/0x16c | kernel_init+0x20/0x1a0 | ret_from_fork+0x10/0x20 | kobject_add_internal failed for arm-ffa-8001 with -EEXIST, don't try to | register things with the same name in the same directory. | arm_ffa arm-ffa: unable to register device arm-ffa-8001 err=-17 | ARM FF-A: ffa_setup_partitions: failed to register partition ID 0x8001

By virtue of being random enough to avoid collisions when generated in a distributed system, there is no way to compress UUID keys to the number of bits required to identify each. We can eliminate '-' in the name but it is not worth eliminating 4 bytes and add unnecessary logic for doing that. Also v1.0 doesn't provide the UUID of the partitions which makes it hard to use the same for the device name.

So to keep it simple, let us alloc an ID using ida_alloc() and append the same to "arm-ffa" to make up a unique device name. Also stash the id value in ffa_dev to help freeing the ID later when the device is destroyed.

Affected Software

VendorProductVersion RangeStatus
LinuxLinuxe781858488b918e30a6ff28e9eab6058b787e3b3 < c2f65991097a62efbdb2bed3c06fc86b08c9593baffected
LinuxLinuxe781858488b918e30a6ff28e9eab6058b787e3b3 < dfc5aaa57f52a5800c339369d235fa30fb734febaffected
LinuxLinuxe781858488b918e30a6ff28e9eab6058b787e3b3 < 93d0cbe88118fcef234d3ebcbdadcb9ebe9d34f1affected
LinuxLinuxe781858488b918e30a6ff28e9eab6058b787e3b3 < 19b8766459c41c6f318f8a548cc1c66dffd18363affected
LinuxLinux5.14affected
LinuxLinux0 < 5.14unaffected
LinuxLinux5.15.114 <= 5.15.*unaffected
LinuxLinux6.1.31 <= 6.1.*unaffected
LinuxLinux6.3.5 <= 6.3.*unaffected
LinuxLinux6.4 <= *unaffected

Weaknesses

ADP Enrichment

CISA ADP Vulnrichment

  • SSVC:
  • Exploitation: none
    • Automatable: no
    • Technical Impact: partial

References