In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: xen-netback: take a reference to the RX task thread Do this in order to prevent the task from being freed if the thread returns (which can be triggered by the frontend) before the call to kthread_stop done as part of the backend tear down. Not taking the reference will lead to a use-after-free in that scenario. Such reference was taken before but dropped as part of the rework done in 2ac061ce97f4. Reintroduce the reference taking and add a comment this time explaining why it's needed. This is XSA-374 / CVE-2021-28691.

Guest triggered use-after-free in Linux xen-netback A malicious or buggy network PV frontend can force Linux netback to disable the interface and terminate the receive kernel thread associated with queue 0 in response to the frontend sending a malformed packet. Such kernel thread termination will lead to a use-after-free in Linux netback when the backend is destroyed, as the kernel thread associated with queue 0 will have already exited and thus the call to kthread_stop will be performed against a stale pointer.