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

mm/slub: avoid zeroing outside-object freepointer for single free

Commit 284f17ac13fe ("mm/slub: handle bulk and single object freeing
separately") splits single and bulk object freeing in two functions
slab_free() and slab_free_bulk() which leads slab_free() to call
slab_free_hook() directly instead of slab_free_freelist_hook().

If `init_on_free` is set, slab_free_hook() zeroes the object.
Afterward, if `slub_debug=F` and `CONFIG_SLAB_FREELIST_HARDENED` are
set, the do_slab_free() slowpath executes freelist consistency
checks and try to decode a zeroed freepointer which leads to a
"Freepointer corrupt" detection in check_object().

During bulk free, slab_free_freelist_hook() isn't affected as it always
sets it objects freepointer using set_freepointer() to maintain its
reconstructed freelist after `init_on_free`.

For single free, object's freepointer thus needs to be avoided when
stored outside the object if `init_on_free` is set. The freepointer left
as is, check_object() may later detect an invalid pointer value due to
objects overflow.

To reproduce, set `slub_debug=FU init_on_free=1 log_level=7` on the
command line of a kernel build with `CONFIG_SLAB_FREELIST_HARDENED=y`.

dmesg sample log:
[   10.708715] =============================================================================
[   10.710323] BUG kmalloc-rnd-05-32 (Tainted: G    B           T ): Freepointer corrupt
[   10.712695] -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[   10.712695]
[   10.712695] Slab 0xffffd8bdc400d580 objects=32 used=4 fp=0xffff9d9a80356f80 flags=0x200000000000a00(workingset|slab|node=0|zone=2)
[   10.716698] Object 0xffff9d9a80356600 @offset=1536 fp=0x7ee4f480ce0ecd7c
[   10.716698]
[   10.716698] Bytes b4 ffff9d9a803565f0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
[   10.720703] Object   ffff9d9a80356600: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
[   10.720703] Object   ffff9d9a80356610: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
[   10.724696] Padding  ffff9d9a8035666c: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
[   10.724696] Padding  ffff9d9a8035667c: 00 00 00 00                                      ....
[   10.724696] FIX kmalloc-rnd-05-32: Object at 0xffff9d9a80356600 not freed

kernel.org https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/56900355485f6e82114b18c812edd57fd7970dcb [No types assigned]

kernel.org https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/8f828aa48812ced28aa39cb3cfe55ef2444d03dd [No types assigned]