CVE-2021-47454

MEDIUM

Linux Kernel 5.10.50-5.10.75 - Scheduling Bug via CPU Offline Preempt Count Mismanagement

Title source: llm
STIX 2.1

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.

Scores

CVSS v3 5.5
EPSS 0.0022
EPSS Percentile 13.2%
Attack Vector LOCAL
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

CISA SSVC

Vulnrichment
Exploitation none
Automatable no
Technical Impact partial

Details

Status published
Products (15)
Linux/Linux < 5.14
Linux/Linux 20a015e948b825afb47855de2efce7cae7c2608f
Linux/Linux 2b6148ef2bd6d8ddc76e7873114f7769b6aa25f0
Linux/Linux 2c669ef6979c370f98d4b876e54f19613c81e075 - 3ea0b497a7a2fff6a4b7090310c9f52c91975934
Linux/Linux 2c669ef6979c370f98d4b876e54f19613c81e075 - 787252a10d9422f3058df9a4821f389e5326c440
Linux/Linux 5.10.50 - 5.10.76
Linux/Linux 5.10.76 - 5.10.*
Linux/Linux 5.12.17 - 5.13
Linux/Linux 5.13.2 - 5.14
Linux/Linux 5.14
... and 5 more
Published May 22, 2024
Tracked Since Feb 18, 2026