CVE-2021-46970 bus: mhi: pci_generic: Remove WQ_MEM_RECLAIM flag from state workqueue

Medium 5.5 Published 27 Feb 2024 Updated 11 May 2026

A kernel warning triggered by incorrect workqueue flags in the MHI driver can lead to system instability or denial of service.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Any signed-in user
Attackable: Local or same network only
Victim action needed: Not needed
Fix: None listed

What is CVE-2021-46970?

CVE-2021-46970 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 27 Feb 2024. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

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

bus: mhi: pci_generic: Remove WQ_MEM_RECLAIM flag from state workqueue

A recent change created a dedicated workqueue for the state-change work with WQ_HIGHPRI (no strong reason for that) and WQ_MEM_RECLAIM flags, but the state-change work (mhi_pm_st_worker) does not guarantee forward progress under memory pressure, and will even wait on various memory allocations when e.g. creating devices, loading firmware, etc... The work is then not part of a memory reclaim path...

Moreover, this causes a warning in check_flush_dependency() since we end up in code that flushes a non-reclaim workqueue:

[ 40.969601] workqueue: WQ_MEM_RECLAIM mhi_hiprio_wq:mhi_pm_st_worker [mhi] is flushing !WQ_MEM_RECLAIM events_highpri:flush_backlog [ 40.969612] WARNING: CPU: 4 PID: 158 at kernel/workqueue.c:2607 check_flush_dependency+0x11c/0x140 [ 40.969733] Call Trace: [ 40.969740] __flush_work+0x97/0x1d0 [ 40.969745] ? wake_up_process+0x15/0x20 [ 40.969749] ? insert_work+0x70/0x80 [ 40.969750] ? __queue_work+0x14a/0x3e0 [ 40.969753] flush_work+0x10/0x20 [ 40.969756] rollback_registered_many+0x1c9/0x510 [ 40.969759] unregister_netdevice_queue+0x94/0x120 [ 40.969761] unregister_netdev+0x1d/0x30 [ 40.969765] mhi_net_remove+0x1a/0x40 [mhi_net] [ 40.969770] mhi_driver_remove+0x124/0x250 [mhi] [ 40.969776] device_release_driver_internal+0xf0/0x1d0 [ 40.969778] device_release_driver+0x12/0x20 [ 40.969782] bus_remove_device+0xe1/0x150 [ 40.969786] device_del+0x17b/0x3e0 [ 40.969791] mhi_destroy_device+0x9a/0x100 [mhi] [ 40.969796] ? mhi_unmap_single_use_bb+0x50/0x50 [mhi] [ 40.969799] device_for_each_child+0x5e/0xa0 [ 40.969804] mhi_pm_st_worker+0x921/0xf50 [mhi]

Which versions are affected by CVE-2021-46970?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2021-46970?

No fix has been published for CVE-2021-46970 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2021-46970 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2021-46970 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as GHSA-jfx3-f7mg-7cp3, UBUNTU-CVE-2021-46970.