CVE-2024-46695
CriticalCVSS 9.8Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk12th percentile - higher than 12% of all known CVEs
Summary
In the Linux kernel, the inode_setsecctx hook for SELinux and Smack has a permission bypass. Root user on an NFS client can change security labels on files on an NFS filesystem exported with root squashing. The fix replaces __vfs_setxattr_noperm() with __vfs_setxattr_locked(), enforcing proper permission checks.
Risk Assessment
Compromising security label integrity could allow privilege escalation or unauthorized data access, especially in multi-user environments.
Recommendation
Update the Linux kernel to a patched version. Also review NFS export configurations and ensure root squashing is correctly set.
Original NVD description (English source)
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: selinux,smack: don't bypass permissions check in inode_setsecctx hook Marek Gresko reports that the root user on an NFS client is able to change the security labels on files on an NFS filesystem that is exported with root squashing enabled. The end of the kerneldoc comment for __vfs_setxattr_noperm() states: * This function requires the caller to lock the inode's i_mutex before it * is executed. It also assumes that the caller will make the appropriate * permission checks. nfsd_setattr() does do permissions checking via fh_verify() and nfsd_permission(), but those don't do all the same permissions checks that are done by security_inode_setxattr() and its related LSM hooks do. Since nfsd_setattr() is the only consumer of security_inode_setsecctx(), simplest solution appears to be to replace the call to __vfs_setxattr_noperm() with a call to __vfs_setxattr_locked(). This fixes the above issue and has the added benefit of causing nfsd to recall conflicting delegations on a file when a client tries to change its security label.