CVE-2023-52836

Technical Description

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 corr

Remediation

Check the references section for vendor advisories and patches from linux. Update linux_kernel to the latest patched version. If immediate patching is not possible, review the CVSS vector to understand the attack surface and apply compensating controls such as network segmentation or access restrictions.

Affected Products

References