U.S. flag   An official website of the United States government
Dot gov

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Https

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock (Dot gov) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

CVE-2020-36789 Detail

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: can: dev: can_get_echo_skb(): prevent call to kfree_skb() in hard IRQ context If a driver calls can_get_echo_skb() during a hardware IRQ (which is often, but not always, the case), the 'WARN_ON(in_irq)' in net/core/skbuff.c#skb_release_head_state() might be triggered, under network congestion circumstances, together with the potential risk of a NULL pointer dereference. The root cause of this issue is the call to kfree_skb() instead of dev_kfree_skb_irq() in net/core/dev.c#enqueue_to_backlog(). This patch prevents the skb to be freed within the call to netif_rx() by incrementing its reference count with skb_get(). The skb is finally freed by one of the in-irq-context safe functions: dev_consume_skb_any() or dev_kfree_skb_any(). The "any" version is used because some drivers might call can_get_echo_skb() in a normal context. The reason for this issue to occur is that initially, in the core network stack, loopback skb were not supposed to be received in hardware IRQ context. The CAN stack is an exeption. This bug was previously reported back in 2017 in [1] but the proposed patch never got accepted. While [1] directly modifies net/core/dev.c, we try to propose here a smoother modification local to CAN network stack (the assumption behind is that only CAN devices are affected by this issue). [1] http://lore.kernel.org/r/[email protected]


Metrics

NVD enrichment efforts reference publicly available information to associate vector strings. CVSS information contributed by other sources is also displayed.
CVSS 4.0 Severity and Vector Strings:

NIST CVSS score
NIST: NVD
N/A
NVD assessment not yet provided.

References to Advisories, Solutions, and Tools

By selecting these links, you will be leaving NIST webspace. We have provided these links to other web sites because they may have information that would be of interest to you. No inferences should be drawn on account of other sites being referenced, or not, from this page. There may be other web sites that are more appropriate for your purpose. NIST does not necessarily endorse the views expressed, or concur with the facts presented on these sites. Further, NIST does not endorse any commercial products that may be mentioned on these sites. Please address comments about this page to [email protected].

Hyperlink Resource
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2283f79b22684d2812e5c76fc2280aae00390365 Patch 
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/248b71ce92d4f3a574b2537f9838f48e892618f4 Patch 
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3a922a85701939624484e7f2fd07d32beed00d25 Patch 
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/451187b20431924d13fcfecc500d7cd2d9951bac Patch 
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7e4cf2ec0ca236c3e5f904239cec6efe1f3baf22 Patch 
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/87530b557affe01c764de32dbeb58cdf47234574 Patch 
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ab46748bf98864f9c3f5559060bf8caf9df2b41e Patch 

Weakness Enumeration

CWE-ID CWE Name Source
CWE-476 NULL Pointer Dereference cwe source acceptance level NIST  

Known Affected Software Configurations Switch to CPE 2.2

CPEs loading, please wait.

Denotes Vulnerable Software
Are we missing a CPE here? Please let us know.

Change History

2 change records found show changes

Quick Info

CVE Dictionary Entry:
CVE-2020-36789
NVD Published Date:
04/17/2025
NVD Last Modified:
04/29/2025
Source:
kernel.org