Security vulnerability: CVE-2022-0435, Remote Stack Overflow in the tipc networking module of the Linux Kernel

This document (000020580) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

For a comprehensive list of affected products and package versions, please see the SUSE CVE announcement:
https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2022-0435.html

Situation

The Transparent Inter Process Communication (TIPC) is an IPC mechanism designed for intra-cluster communication. It represents the cluster topology using the concept of nodes and the links between these nodes.

As part of the monitoring framework the "Overlapping Ring Supervision Algorithm" was introduced to monitor neighbouring nodes in the cluster. This also introduced a security bug that could be exploited to execute a remote Denial of Service (DoS) attack on systems using TIPC and FORTIFY_SOURCE enabled, or remote code execution on system without the FORTIFY_SOURCE bounds checks enabled. Anyway, a canary leak (or no CONFIG_STACKPROTECTOR) is required to successfully achieve remote code execution.

Resolution

Installing the updated packages provided by SUSE is sufficient to fix the problem. Please use the following command to search for the specific patch:

zypper lp -a --cve=CVE-2022-0435

or

zypper patch --cve=CVE-2022-0435

to apply it.

After a kernel update a restart is required. Unless you are using the SUSE Linux Enterprise Live Patching extension, for which SUSE provides the live patch to fix this vulnerability allowing you to patch the kernel without shutting down your system and reducing the need for planned downtime and increasing service availability.

Status

Security Alert

Additional Information

To check whether a system is using the tipc module please use:

lsmod | grep tipc

and unload it with

rmmod tipc

this last command fails in case the module is in-use. In that case please either update the kernel or install the live-patch.

If a patch cannot be applied, deleting or blacklisting the tipc.ko file will mitigate the issue:

1. Delete the related kernel object file:

SLE 12 based kernel:
rm /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/net/tipc/tipc.ko

SLE 15 based kernel:
rm /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/net/tipc/tipc.ko.xz

2. Blacklist the module:
echo "blacklist tipc" >> /etc/modprobe.d/tipc-blacklist.conf

3. Reboot

Disclaimer

This Support Knowledgebase provides a valuable tool for SUSE customers and parties interested in our products and solutions to acquire information, ideas and learn from one another. Materials are provided for informational, personal or non-commercial use within your organization and are presented "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.

Document ID:000020580
Creation Date: 11-Feb-2022
Modified Date:11-Feb-2022
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications
- SUSE Manager Server
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro
- SUSE Manager Proxy
- SUSE Linux Enterprise HPC