CVE-2022-49446

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

nvdimm: Fix firmware activation deadlock scenarios

Lockdep reports the following deadlock scenarios for CXL root device power-management, device_prepare(), operations, and device_shutdown() operations for nd_region devices:

Chain exists of: &nvdimm_region_key –> &nvdimm_bus->reconfig_mutex –> system_transition_mutex

Possible unsafe locking scenario:

    CPU0                    CPU1
    ----                    ----

lock(system_transition_mutex); lock(&nvdimm_bus->reconfig_mutex); lock(system_transition_mutex); lock(&nvdimm_region_key);

Chain exists of: &cxl_nvdimm_bridge_key –> acpi_scan_lock –> &cxl_root_key

Possible unsafe locking scenario:

    CPU0                    CPU1
    ----                    ----

lock(&cxl_root_key); lock(acpi_scan_lock); lock(&cxl_root_key); lock(&cxl_nvdimm_bridge_key);

These stem from holding nvdimm_bus_lock() over hibernate_quiet_exec() which walks the entire system device topology taking device_lock() along the way. The nvdimm_bus_lock() is protecting against unregistration, multiple simultaneous ops callers, and preventing activate_show() from racing activate_store(). For the first 2, the lock is redundant. Unregistration already flushes all ops users, and sysfs already prevents multiple threads to be active in an ops handler at the same time. For the last userspace should already be waiting for its last activate_store() to complete, and does not need activate_show() to flush the write side, so this lock usage can be deleted in these attributes.

Weakness

The product does not properly acquire or release a lock on a resource, leading to unexpected resource state changes and behaviors.

Affected Software

Extended Description

Locking is a type of synchronization behavior that ensures that multiple independently-operating processes or threads do not interfere with each other when accessing the same resource. All processes/threads are expected to follow the same steps for locking. If these steps are not followed precisely - or if no locking is done at all - then another process/thread could modify the shared resource in a way that is not visible or predictable to the original process. This can lead to data or memory corruption, denial of service, etc.

Potential Mitigations

Related Attack Patterns

• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/25.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/26.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/27.html

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2f97ebc58d5fc83ca1528cd553fa725472ab3ca8
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2fd853fdb40afc052de338693df1372f2ead7be7
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/641649f31e20df630310f5c22f26c071acc676d4
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ceb924ee16b2c8e48dcac3d9ad6be01c40b5a228
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e6829d1bd3c4b58296ee9e412f7ed4d6cb390192