Updated: 2025-05-09 19:10:21.814217
Description:
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ALSA: pcm: Fix potential AB/BA lock with buffer_mutex and mmap_lock syzbot caught a potential deadlock between the PCM runtime->buffer_mutex and the mm->mmap_lock. It was brought by the recent fix to cover the racy read/write and other ioctls, and in that commit, I overlooked a (hopefully only) corner case that may take the revert lock, namely, the OSS mmap. The OSS mmap operation exceptionally allows to re-configure the parameters inside the OSS mmap syscall, where mm->mmap_mutex is already held. Meanwhile, the copy_from/to_user calls at read/write operations also take the mm->mmap_lock internally, hence it may lead to a AB/BA deadlock. A similar problem was already seen in the past and we fixed it with a refcount (in commit b248371628aa). The former fix covered only the call paths with OSS read/write and OSS ioctls, while we need to cover the concurrent access via both ALSA and OSS APIs now. This patch addresses the problem above by replacing the buffer_mutex lock in the read/write operations with a refcount similar as we've used for OSS. The new field, runtime->buffer_accessing, keeps the number of concurrent read/write operations. Unlike the former buffer_mutex protection, this protects only around the copy_from/to_user() calls; the other codes are basically protected by the PCM stream lock. The refcount can be a negative, meaning blocked by the ioctls. If a negative value is seen, the read/write aborts with -EBUSY. In the ioctl side, OTOH, they check this refcount, too, and set to a negative value for blocking unless it's already being accessed.
Links | NIST | CIRCL | RHEL | Ubuntu |
Severity | Score | |
---|---|---|
CVSS Version 2.x | NONE | 0 |
CVSS Version 3.x | MEDIUM | 5.5 |
OS name | Project name | Version | Score | Severity | Status | Errata | Last updated | Statement |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CentOS 8.4 ELS | kernel | 4.18.0 | 5.5 | MEDIUM | Needs Triage | 2025-05-09 20:40:48 | ||
CentOS 8.5 ELS | kernel | 4.18.0 | 5.5 | MEDIUM | Needs Triage | 2025-05-09 20:40:47 | ||
CentOS Stream 8 ELS | kernel | 4.18.0 | 5.5 | MEDIUM | Needs Triage | 2025-05-16 07:29:21 |