Message-ID: <2025121628-CVE-2025-68169-1e23@gregkh>
Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2025 14:43:30 +0100
From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
To: linux-cve-announce@...r.kernel.org
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...nel.org>
Subject: CVE-2025-68169: netpoll: Fix deadlock in memory allocation under spinlock

From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...nel.org>

Description
===========

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

netpoll: Fix deadlock in memory allocation under spinlock

Fix a AA deadlock in refill_skbs() where memory allocation while holding
skb_pool->lock can trigger a recursive lock acquisition attempt.

The deadlock scenario occurs when the system is under severe memory
pressure:

1. refill_skbs() acquires skb_pool->lock (spinlock)
2. alloc_skb() is called while holding the lock
3. Memory allocator fails and calls slab_out_of_memory()
4. This triggers printk() for the OOM warning
5. The console output path calls netpoll_send_udp()
6. netpoll_send_udp() attempts to acquire the same skb_pool->lock
7. Deadlock: the lock is already held by the same CPU

Call stack:
  refill_skbs()
    spin_lock_irqsave(&skb_pool->lock)    <- lock acquired
    __alloc_skb()
      kmem_cache_alloc_node_noprof()
        slab_out_of_memory()
          printk()
            console_flush_all()
              netpoll_send_udp()
                skb_dequeue()
                  spin_lock_irqsave(&skb_pool->lock)     <- deadlock attempt

This bug was exposed by commit 248f6571fd4c51 ("netpoll: Optimize skb
refilling on critical path") which removed refill_skbs() from the
critical path (where nested printk was being deferred), letting nested
printk being called from inside refill_skbs()

Refactor refill_skbs() to never allocate memory while holding
the spinlock.

Another possible solution to fix this problem is protecting the
refill_skbs() from nested printks, basically calling
printk_deferred_{enter,exit}() in refill_skbs(), then, any nested
pr_warn() would be deferred.

I prefer this approach, given I _think_ it might be a good idea to move
the alloc_skb() from GFP_ATOMIC to GFP_KERNEL in the future, so, having
the alloc_skb() outside of the lock will be necessary step.

There is a possible TOCTOU issue when checking for the pool length, and
queueing the new allocated skb, but, this is not an issue, given that
an extra SKB in the pool is harmless and it will be eventually used.

The Linux kernel CVE team has assigned CVE-2025-68169 to this issue.


Affected and fixed versions
===========================

	Issue introduced in 6.15 with commit 248f6571fd4c51531f7f8f07f186f7ae98a50afc and fixed in 6.17.8 with commit 06742a3ab884d7428c9050b205ffcf6a8a548397
	Issue introduced in 6.15 with commit 248f6571fd4c51531f7f8f07f186f7ae98a50afc and fixed in 6.18 with commit 327c20c21d80e0d87834b392d83ae73c955ad8ff

Please see https://www.kernel.org for a full list of currently supported
kernel versions by the kernel community.

Unaffected versions might change over time as fixes are backported to
older supported kernel versions.  The official CVE entry at
	https://cve.org/CVERecord/?id=CVE-2025-68169
will be updated if fixes are backported, please check that for the most
up to date information about this issue.


Affected files
==============

The file(s) affected by this issue are:
	net/core/netpoll.c


Mitigation
==========

The Linux kernel CVE team recommends that you update to the latest
stable kernel version for this, and many other bugfixes.  Individual
changes are never tested alone, but rather are part of a larger kernel
release.  Cherry-picking individual commits is not recommended or
supported by the Linux kernel community at all.  If however, updating to
the latest release is impossible, the individual changes to resolve this
issue can be found at these commits:
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/06742a3ab884d7428c9050b205ffcf6a8a548397
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/327c20c21d80e0d87834b392d83ae73c955ad8ff

Powered by blists - more mailing lists