In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: bpf: fix UAF by restoring RCU-delayed inode freeing in bpffs commit 4f375ade6aa9 ("bpf: Avoid RCU context warning when unpinning htab with internal structs") moved ino…

Overview

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

bpf: fix UAF by restoring RCU-delayed inode freeing in bpffs

commit 4f375ade6aa9 ("bpf: Avoid RCU context warning when unpinning htab with internal structs") moved inode cleanup from ->free_inode() into ->destroy_inode() to avoid sleeping in RCU context when calling bpf_any_put(). However this removed the RCU delay on freeing the inode itself and the cached symlink body (i_link), both of which can be accessed by RCU pathwalk (pick_link, may_lookup etc.).

This causes a use-after-free when a concurrent unlinkat() drops the last inode reference and destroy_inode() frees the inode immediately, while another task is still walking the path in RCU mode and reads inode->i_opflags (offset +2) inside current_time() -> is_mgtime().

KASAN reports: BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in is_mgtime include/linux/fs.h:2313 Read of size 2 at addr ffff8880407e4282 (offset +2 = i_opflags)

The rules (per Al Viro): ->destroy_inode() called immediately, can sleep, use for blocking cleanup e.g. bpf_any_put() ->free_inode() called after RCU grace period, use for freeing inode and anything RCU-accessible e.g. i_link

Fix: split the two concerns properly:

• keep bpf_any_put() in bpf_destroy_inode() since it is blocking and needs to run promptly
• introduce bpf_free_inode() to handle kfree(i_link) and free_inode_nonrcu() with proper RCU delay, preventing the UAF

Remediation

Refer to the linked advisories for vendor-supplied fixes and affected version ranges.