CVE-2023-52836

Summary

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

locking/ww_mutex/test: Fix potential workqueue corruption

In some cases running with the test-ww_mutex code, I was seeing odd behavior where sometimes it seemed flush_workqueue was returning before all the work threads were finished.

Often this would cause strange crashes as the mutexes would be freed while they were being used.

Looking at the code, there is a lifetime problem as the controlling thread that spawns the work allocates the "struct stress" structures that are passed to the workqueue threads. Then when the workqueue threads are finished, they free the stress struct that was passed to them.

Unfortunately the workqueue work_struct node is in the stress struct. Which means the work_struct is freed before the work thread returns and while flush_workqueue is waiting.

It seems like a better idea to have the controlling thread both allocate and free the stress structures, so that we can be sure we don't corrupt the workqueue by freeing the structure prematurely.

So this patch reworks the test to do so, and with this change I no longer see the early flush_workqueue returns.

Affected Software

VendorProductVersion RangeStatus
LinuxLinux2a0c11282881875dc44f166a20eedf0d866dd0ef < d4d37c9e6a4dbcca958dabd99216550525c7e389affected
LinuxLinux2a0c11282881875dc44f166a20eedf0d866dd0ef < d8267cabbe1bed15ccf8b0e684c528bf8eeef715affected
LinuxLinux2a0c11282881875dc44f166a20eedf0d866dd0ef < dcd85e3c929368076a7592b27f541e0da8b427f5affected
LinuxLinux2a0c11282881875dc44f166a20eedf0d866dd0ef < 9ed2d68b3925145f5f51c46559484881d6082f75affected
LinuxLinux2a0c11282881875dc44f166a20eedf0d866dd0ef < e89d0ed45a419c485bae999426ecf92697cbdda3affected
LinuxLinux2a0c11282881875dc44f166a20eedf0d866dd0ef < c56df79d68677cf062da1b6e3b33e74299a92dfcaffected
LinuxLinux2a0c11282881875dc44f166a20eedf0d866dd0ef < e36407713163363e65566e7af0abe207d5f59a0caffected
LinuxLinux2a0c11282881875dc44f166a20eedf0d866dd0ef < 304a2c4aad0fff887ce493e4197bf9cbaf394479affected
LinuxLinux2a0c11282881875dc44f166a20eedf0d866dd0ef < bccdd808902f8c677317cec47c306e42b93b849eaffected
LinuxLinux4.11affected
LinuxLinux0 < 4.11unaffected
LinuxLinux4.14.331 <= 4.14.*unaffected
LinuxLinux4.19.300 <= 4.19.*unaffected
LinuxLinux5.4.262 <= 5.4.*unaffected
LinuxLinux5.10.202 <= 5.10.*unaffected
LinuxLinux5.15.140 <= 5.15.*unaffected
LinuxLinux6.1.64 <= 6.1.*unaffected
LinuxLinux6.5.13 <= 6.5.*unaffected
LinuxLinux6.6.3 <= 6.6.*unaffected
LinuxLinux6.7 <= *unaffected

Weaknesses

ADP Enrichment

CISA ADP Vulnrichment

  • SSVC:
  • Exploitation: none
    • Automatable: no
    • Technical Impact: partial

CVE Program Container

Additional References

References