N/A - CVE-2025-22111

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

net: Remove RTNL dance for SIOCBRADDIF and SIOCBRDELIF.

SIOCBRDELIF is passed to dev_ioctl() first and later forwarded to br_ioctl_call(), which causes unnecessary RTNL dance and the splat below [0] under RTNL pressure.

Let's say Thread A is trying to detach a device from a bridge and Thread B is trying to remove the bridge.

In dev_ioctl(), Thread A bumps the bridge device's refcnt by netdev_hold() and releases RTNL because the following br_ioctl_call() also re-acquires RTNL.

In the race window, Thread B could acquire RTNL and try to remove the bridge device. Then, rtnl_unlock() by Thread B will release RTNL and wait for netdev_put() by Thread A.

Thread A, however, must hold RTNL after the unlock in dev_ifsioc(), which may take long under RTNL pressure, resulting in the splat by Thread B.

Thread A (SIOCBRDELIF) Thread B (SIOCBRDELBR)
---------------------- ----------------------
sock_ioctl sock_ioctl
`- sock_do_ioctl `- br_ioctl_call
`- dev_ioctl `- br_ioctl_stub
|- rtnl_lock |
|- dev_ifsioc '
' |- dev = __dev_get_by_name(...)
|- netdev_hold(dev, ...) .
/ |- rtnl_unlock ------. |
| |- br_ioctl_call `---> |- rtnl_lock
Race | | `- br_ioctl_stub |- br_del_bridge
Window | | | |- dev = __dev_get_by_name(...)
| | | May take long | `- br_dev_delete(dev, ...)
| | | under RTNL pressure | `- unregister_netdevice_queue(dev, ...)
| | | | `- rtnl_unlock
\ | |- rtnl_lock <-' `- netdev_run_todo
| |- ... `- netdev_run_todo
| `- rtnl_unlock |- __rtnl_unlock
| |- netdev_wait_allrefs_any
|- netdev_put(dev, ...) <----------------'
Wait refcnt decrement
and log splat below

To avoid blocking SIOCBRDELBR unnecessarily, let's not call dev_ioctl() for SIOCBRADDIF and SIOCBRDELIF.

In the dev_ioctl() path, we do the following:

1. Copy struct ifreq by get_user_ifreq in sock_do_ioctl()
2. Check CAP_NET_ADMIN in dev_ioctl()
3. Call dev_load() in dev_ioctl()
4. Fetch the master dev from ifr.ifr_name in dev_ifsioc()

3. can be done by request_module() in br_ioctl_call(), so we move 1., 2., and 4. to br_ioctl_stub().

Note that 2. is also checked later in add_del_if(), but it's better performed before RTNL.

SIOCBRADDIF and SIOCBRDELIF have been processed in dev_ioctl() since the pre-git era, and there seems to be no specific reason to process them there.

[0]: unregister_netdevice: waiting for wpan3 to become free. Usage count = 2 ref_tracker: wpan3@ffff8880662d8608 has 1/1 users at
__netdev_tracker_alloc include/linux/netdevice.h:4282 [inline]
netdev_hold include/linux/netdevice.h:4311 [inline]
dev_ifsioc+0xc6a/0x1160 net/core/dev_ioctl.c:624
dev_ioctl+0x255/0x10c0 net/core/dev_ioctl.c:826
sock_do_ioctl+0x1ca/0x260 net/socket.c:1213
sock_ioctl+0x23a/0x6c0 net/socket.c:1318
vfs_ioctl fs/ioctl.c:51 [inline]
__do_sys_ioctl fs/ioctl.c:906 [inline]
__se_sys_ioctl fs/ioctl.c:892 [inline]
__x64_sys_ioctl+0x1a4/0x210 fs/ioctl.c:892
do_syscall_x64 arch/x86/entry/common.c:52 [inline]
do_syscall_64+0xcb/0x250 arch/x86/entry/common.c:83
entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x77/0x7f