CVE-2024-40917: memblock: make memblock_set_node() also warn about use of MAX_NUMNODES

Description

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

memblock: make memblock_set_node() also warn about use of MAX_NUMNODES

On an (old) x86 system with SRAT just covering space above 4Gb:

ACPI: SRAT: Node 0 PXM 0 [mem 0x100000000-0xfffffffff] hotplug

the commit referenced below leads to this NUMA configuration no longer
being refused by a CONFIG_NUMA=y kernel (previously

NUMA: nodes only cover 6144MB of your 8185MB e820 RAM. Not used.
No NUMA configuration found
Faking a node at [mem 0x0000000000000000-0x000000027fffffff]

was seen in the log directly after the message quoted above), because of
memblock_validate_numa_coverage() checking for NUMA_NO_NODE (only). This
in turn led to memblock_alloc_range_nid()'s warning about MAX_NUMNODES
triggering, followed by a NULL deref in memmap_init() when trying to
access node 64's (NODE_SHIFT=6) node data.

To compensate said change, make memblock_set_node() warn on and adjust
a passed in value of MAX_NUMNODES, just like various other functions
already do.

Classification

CVE ID: CVE-2024-40917

Affected Products

Vendor: Linux

Product: Linux

Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS)

EPSS Score: 0.05% (probability of being exploited)

EPSS Percentile: 17.83% (scored less or equal to compared to others)

EPSS Date: 2025-02-04 (when was this score calculated)

References

https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/22f742b8f738918f683198a18ec3c691acda14c4
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e0eec24e2e199873f43df99ec39773ad3af2bff7

Timeline