In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: stmmac: protect updates of 64-bit statistics counters As explained by a comment in <linux/u64_stats_sync.h>, write side of struct u64_stats_sync must ensure mutua…

Overview

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

net: stmmac: protect updates of 64-bit statistics counters

As explained by a comment in <linux/u64_stats_sync.h>, write side of struct u64_stats_sync must ensure mutual exclusion, or one seqcount update could be lost on 32-bit platforms, thus blocking readers forever. Such lockups have been observed in real world after stmmac_xmit() on one CPU raced with stmmac_napi_poll_tx() on another CPU.

To fix the issue without introducing a new lock, split the statics into three parts:

1. fields updated only under the tx queue lock,
2. fields updated only during NAPI poll,
3. fields updated only from interrupt context,

Updates to fields in the first two groups are already serialized through other locks. It is sufficient to split the existing struct u64_stats_sync so that each group has its own.

Note that tx_set_ic_bit is updated from both contexts. Split this counter so that each context gets its own, and calculate their sum to get the total value in stmmac_get_ethtool_stats().

For the third group, multiple interrupts may be processed by different CPUs at the same time, but interrupts on the same CPU will not nest. Move fields from this group to a newly created per-cpu struct stmmac_pcpu_stats.

Affected

• linux_kernel >= 6.6, < 6.6.18
• linux_kernel >= 6.7, < 6.7.6
• linux_kernel = 6.8

Remediation

Upgrade past the affected range:

• linux_kernel 6.7.6