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

RDMA/cma: Fix workqueue crash in cma_netevent_work_handler

struct rdma_cm_id has member struct work_struct net_work that is reused for enqueuing cma_netevent_work_handler()s onto cma_wq.

Below crash[1] can occur if more than one call to cma_netevent_callback() occurs in quick succession, which further enqueues cma_netevent_work_handler()s for the same rdma_cm_id, overwriting any previously queued work-item(s) that was just scheduled to run i.e. there is no guarantee the queued work item may run between two successive calls to cma_netevent_callback() and the 2nd INIT_WORK would overwrite the 1st work item (for the same rdma_cm_id), despite grabbing id_table_lock during enqueue.

Also drgn analysis [2] indicates the work item was likely overwritten.

Fix this by moving the INIT_WORK() to __rdma_create_id(), so that it doesnt race with any existing queue_work() or its worker thread.

[1] Trimmed crash stack:

BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000008 kworker/u256:6 … 6.12.0-0… Workqueue: cma_netevent_work_handler [rdma_cm] (rdma_cm) RIP: 0010:process_one_work+0xba/0x31a Call Trace: worker_thread+0x266/0x3a0 kthread+0xcf/0x100 ret_from_fork+0x31/0x50 ret_from_fork_asm+0x1a/0x30

[2] drgn crash analysis:

trace = prog.crashed_thread().stack_trace() trace (0) crash_setup_regs (./arch/x86/include/asm/kexec.h:111:15) (1) __crash_kexec (kernel/crash_core.c:122:4) (2) panic (kernel/panic.c:399:3) (3) oops_end (arch/x86/kernel/dumpstack.c:382:3) … (8) process_one_work (kernel/workqueue.c:3168:2) (9) process_scheduled_works (kernel/workqueue.c:3310:3) (10) worker_thread (kernel/workqueue.c:3391:4) (11) kthread (kernel/kthread.c:389:9)

Line workqueue.c:3168 for this kernel version is in process_one_work(): 3168 strscpy(worker->desc, pwq->wq->name, WORKER_DESC_LEN);

trace[8][work] *(struct work_struct *)0xffff92577d0a21d8 = { .data = (atomic_long_t){ .counter = (s64)536870912, <=== Note }, .entry = (struct list_head){ .next = (struct list_head *)0xffff924d075924c0, .prev = (struct list_head *)0xffff924d075924c0, }, .func = (work_func_t)cma_netevent_work_handler+0x0 = 0xffffffffc2cec280, }

Suspicion is that pwq is NULL:

trace[8][pwq] (struct pool_workqueue *)

In process_one_work(), pwq is assigned from: struct pool_workqueue *pwq = get_work_pwq(work);

and get_work_pwq() is: static struct pool_workqueue *get_work_pwq(struct work_struct *work) { unsigned long data = atomic_long_read(&work->data);

if (data & WORK_STRUCT_PWQ)
	return work_struct_pwq(data);
else
	return NULL;

}

WORK_STRUCT_PWQ is 0x4:

print(repr(prog[WORK_STRUCT_PWQ])) Object(prog, enum work_flags, value=4)

But work->data is 536870912 which is 0x20000000. So, get_work_pwq() returns NULL and we crash in process_one_work(): 3168 strscpy(worker->desc, pwq->wq->name, WORKER_DESC_LEN);

Weakness

The product dereferences a pointer that it expects to be valid but is NULL.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/45f5dcdd049719fb999393b30679605f16ebce14
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/51003b2c872c63d28bcf5fbcc52cf7b05615f7b7
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/b172a4a0de254f1fcce7591833a9a63547c2f447
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c2b169fc7a12665d8a675c1ff14bca1b9c63fb9a
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/d23fd7a539ac078df119707110686a5b226ee3bb
• https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2025/05/msg00045.html