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.

Vulnerability Change Records for CVE-2020-36789

Change History

New CVE Received from kernel.org 4/17/2025 2:15:42 PM

Action Type Old Value New Value
Added 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]
Added Reference

								
							
							
						
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2283f79b22684d2812e5c76fc2280aae00390365
Added Reference

								
							
							
						
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/248b71ce92d4f3a574b2537f9838f48e892618f4
Added Reference

								
							
							
						
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3a922a85701939624484e7f2fd07d32beed00d25
Added Reference

								
							
							
						
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/451187b20431924d13fcfecc500d7cd2d9951bac
Added Reference

								
							
							
						
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7e4cf2ec0ca236c3e5f904239cec6efe1f3baf22
Added Reference

								
							
							
						
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/87530b557affe01c764de32dbeb58cdf47234574
Added Reference

								
							
							
						
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ab46748bf98864f9c3f5559060bf8caf9df2b41e