Attacker Value
Unknown
(0 users assessed)
Exploitability
Unknown
(0 users assessed)
User Interaction
Unknown
Privileges Required
Unknown
Attack Vector
Unknown
0

CVE-2021-47454

Disclosure Date: May 22, 2024
Add MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques that apply to this CVE.

Description

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

powerpc/smp: do not decrement idle task preempt count in CPU offline

With PREEMPT_COUNT=y, when a CPU is offlined and then onlined again, we
get:

BUG: scheduling while atomic: swapper/1/0/0x00000000
no locks held by swapper/1/0.
CPU: 1 PID: 0 Comm: swapper/1 Not tainted 5.15.0-rc2+ #100
Call Trace:
dump_stack_lvl+0xac/0x108
__schedule_bug+0xac/0xe0
__schedule+0xcf8/0x10d0
schedule_idle+0x3c/0x70
do_idle+0x2d8/0x4a0
cpu_startup_entry+0x38/0x40
start_secondary+0x2ec/0x3a0
start_secondary_prolog+0x10/0x14

This is because powerpc’s arch_cpu_idle_dead() decrements the idle task’s
preempt count, for reasons explained in commit a7c2bb8279d2 (“powerpc:
Re-enable preemption before cpu_die()”), specifically “start_secondary()
expects a preempt_count() of 0.”

However, since commit 2c669ef6979c (“powerpc/preempt: Don’t touch the idle
task’s preempt_count during hotplug”) and commit f1a0a376ca0c (“sched/core:
Initialize the idle task with preemption disabled”), that justification no
longer holds.

The idle task isn’t supposed to re-enable preemption, so remove the
vestigial preempt_enable() from the CPU offline path.

Tested with pseries and powernv in qemu, and pseries on PowerVM.

Add Assessment

No one has assessed this topic. Be the first to add your voice to the community.

CVSS V3 Severity and Metrics
Base Score:
None
Impact Score:
Unknown
Exploitability Score:
Unknown
Vector:
Unknown
Attack Vector (AV):
Unknown
Attack Complexity (AC):
Unknown
Privileges Required (PR):
Unknown
User Interaction (UI):
Unknown
Scope (S):
Unknown
Confidentiality (C):
Unknown
Integrity (I):
Unknown
Availability (A):
Unknown

General Information

Vendors

  • Linux

Products

  • Linux

Additional Info

Technical Analysis