CVE Catalog

CVE-2024-42131

MediumCVSS 4.4
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.25%

15th percentile - higher than 15% of all known CVEs

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the dirty throttling logic assumed dirty limits in PAGE_SIZE units fit into 32 bits, leading to overflows and possible division by zero with very large limits (>16 TB). The fix caps the maximum limit values.

Risk Assessment

The flaw is root-only triggerable and can cause system instability or crash. It requires setting extremely high dirty_bytes/dirty_ratio limits.

Recommendation

Update the Linux kernel to a version with the fix. Avoid setting dirty_bytes/dirty_ratio limits above 16 TB.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

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Original NVD description (English source)

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm: avoid overflows in dirty throttling logic The dirty throttling logic is interspersed with assumptions that dirty limits in PAGE_SIZE units fit into 32-bit (so that various multiplications fit into 64-bits). If limits end up being larger, we will hit overflows, possible divisions by 0 etc. Fix these problems by never allowing so large dirty limits as they have dubious practical value anyway. For dirty_bytes / dirty_background_bytes interfaces we can just refuse to set so large limits. For dirty_ratio / dirty_background_ratio it isn't so simple as the dirty limit is computed from the amount of available memory which can change due to memory hotplug etc. So when converting dirty limits from ratios to numbers of pages, we just don't allow the result to exceed UINT_MAX. This is root-only triggerable problem which occurs when the operator sets dirty limits to >16 TB.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS