CVE-2022-49350

EXPORTSYMBOL and _init is a bad combination because the .init.text section is freed up after the initialization. Hence, modules cannot use symbols annotated __init. The access to a freed symbol may end up with kernel panic.

modpost used to detect it, but it has been broken for a decade.

Recently, I fixed modpost so it started to warn it again, then this showed up in linux-next builds.

There are two ways to fix it:

Remove __init
Remove EXPORT_SYMBOL

I chose the latter for this case because the only in-tree call-site, drivers/net/phy/phydevice.c is never compiled as modular. (CONFIGPHYLIB is boolean)

References

Affected packages

Debian:11 / linux

Package

Name: linux
Purl: pkg:deb/debian/linux?arch=source

Affected ranges

Type: ECOSYSTEM
Events: Introduced

0Unknown introduced version / All previous versions are affected

Fixed

5.10.127-1

Affected versions

5.*

5.10.46-4

5.10.46-5

5.10.70-1~bpo10+1

5.10.70-1

5.10.84-1

5.10.92-1~bpo10+1

5.10.92-1

5.10.92-2

5.10.103-1~bpo10+1

5.10.103-1

5.10.106-1

5.10.113-1

5.10.120-1~bpo10+1

5.10.120-1

Ecosystem specific

{
    "urgency": "not yet assigned"
}

Debian:12 / linux

Package

Name: linux
Purl: pkg:deb/debian/linux?arch=source

Affected ranges

Type: ECOSYSTEM
Events: Introduced

0Unknown introduced version / All previous versions are affected

Fixed

5.18.5-1

Ecosystem specific

{
    "urgency": "not yet assigned"
}

Debian:13 / linux

Package

Name: linux
Purl: pkg:deb/debian/linux?arch=source

Affected ranges

Type: ECOSYSTEM
Events: Introduced

0Unknown introduced version / All previous versions are affected

Fixed

5.18.5-1

Ecosystem specific

{
    "urgency": "not yet assigned"
}