CVE-2025-40327

Linux Kernel 6.17-6.17.7 - Denial of Service via cpu-clock Event Recursion

Title source: llm
STIX 2.1

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: perf/core: Fix system hang caused by cpu-clock usage cpu-clock usage by the async-profiler tool can trigger a system hang, which got bisected back to the following commit by Octavia Togami: 18dbcbfabfff ("perf: Fix the POLL_HUP delivery breakage") causes this issue The root cause of the hang is that cpu-clock is a special type of SW event which relies on hrtimers. The __perf_event_overflow() callback is invoked from the hrtimer handler for cpu-clock events, and __perf_event_overflow() tries to call cpu_clock_event_stop() to stop the event, which calls htimer_cancel() to cancel the hrtimer. But that's a recursion into the hrtimer code from a hrtimer handler, which (unsurprisingly) deadlocks. To fix this bug, use hrtimer_try_to_cancel() instead, and set the PERF_HES_STOPPED flag, which causes perf_swevent_hrtimer() to stop the event once it sees the PERF_HES_STOPPED flag. [ mingo: Fixed the comments and improved the changelog. ]

Scores

EPSS 0.0003
EPSS Percentile 8.0%

Details

Status published
Products (9)
linux/Kernel 6.17.0 - 6.17.8linux
Linux/Linux < 6.17
Linux/Linux 18dbcbfabfffc4a5d3ea10290c5ad27f22b0d240 - 6b8c512811644cf2f5eaf6f44e928683c54127f0
Linux/Linux 18dbcbfabfffc4a5d3ea10290c5ad27f22b0d240 - eb3182ef0405ff2f6668fd3e5ff9883f60ce8801
Linux/Linux 6.16.8 - 6.17
Linux/Linux 6.17
Linux/Linux 6.17.8 - 6.17.*
Linux/Linux 6.18
Linux/Linux b2de0c9ce8e542b5cb4cd3944620d9dd1ea1f0ac
Published Dec 09, 2025
Tracked Since Feb 18, 2026