CVE-2024-36925
kernel: swiotlb: initialise restricted pool list_head when SWIOTLB_DYNAMIC=y
Severity
LowRed Hat Product Security
CVSS 3.1
Review impact separately from score.
Published · May 30, 2024
Updated · November 21, 2025
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
swiotlb: initialise restricted pool list_head when SWIOTLB_DYNAMIC=y
Using restricted DMA pools (CONFIG_DMA_RESTRICTED_POOL=y) in conjunction with dynamic SWIOTLB (CONFIG_SWIOTLB_DYNAMIC=y) leads to the following crash when initialising the restricted pools at boot-time:
| Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 0000000000000008 | Internal error: Oops: 0000000096000005 [#1] PREEMPT SMP | pc : rmem_swiotlb_device_init+0xfc/0x1ec | lr : rmem_swiotlb_device_init+0xf0/0x1ec | Call trace: | rmem_swiotlb_device_init+0xfc/0x1ec | of_reserved_mem_device_init_by_idx+0x18c/0x238 | of_dma_configure_id+0x31c/0x33c | platform_dma_configure+0x34/0x80
faddr2line reveals that the crash is in the list validation code:
include/linux/list.h:83 include/linux/rculist.h:79 include/linux/rculist.h:106 kernel/dma/swiotlb.c:306 kernel/dma/swiotlb.c:1695
because add_mem_pool() is trying to list_add_rcu() to a NULL 'mem->pools'.
Fix the crash by initialising the 'mem->pools' list_head in rmem_swiotlb_device_init() before calling add_mem_pool().
CVSS score applicability
The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.
Mitigation
No mitigation is specified in collected source.
CVSS / CWE
CVSS 3.1 · 4.4CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CWE-476 · NULL Pointer Dereference