CVE-2024-36882 mm: use memalloc_nofs_save() in page_cache_ra_order()

Medium 5.5 Published Updated

A deadlock in the Linux kernel memory management subsystem can cause system hangs when performing large folio operations on ext4 filesystems.

Exploited in the wild
Not known
Login needed
Any signed-in user
Attackable
Local or same network only
Victim action needed
Not needed
Fix
Available

What is CVE-2024-36882?

CVE-2024-36882 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 30 May 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:

mm: use memalloc_nofs_save() in page_cache_ra_order()

See commit f2c817bed58d ("mm: use memalloc_nofs_save in readahead path"), ensure that page_cache_ra_order() do not attempt to reclaim file-backed pages too, or it leads to a deadlock, found issue when test ext4 large folio.

INFO: task DataXceiver for:7494 blocked for more than 120 seconds. "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message. task:DataXceiver for state:D stack:0 pid:7494 ppid:1 flags:0x00000200 Call trace: __switch_to+0x14c/0x240 __schedule+0x82c/0xdd0 schedule+0x58/0xf0 io_schedule+0x24/0xa0 __folio_lock+0x130/0x300 migrate_pages_batch+0x378/0x918 migrate_pages+0x350/0x700 compact_zone+0x63c/0xb38 compact_zone_order+0xc0/0x118 try_to_compact_pages+0xb0/0x280 __alloc_pages_direct_compact+0x98/0x248 __alloc_pages+0x510/0x1110 alloc_pages+0x9c/0x130 folio_alloc+0x20/0x78 filemap_alloc_folio+0x8c/0x1b0 page_cache_ra_order+0x174/0x308 ondemand_readahead+0x1c8/0x2b8 page_cache_async_ra+0x68/0xb8 filemap_readahead.isra.0+0x64/0xa8 filemap_get_pages+0x3fc/0x5b0 filemap_splice_read+0xf4/0x280 ext4_file_splice_read+0x2c/0x48 [ext4] vfs_splice_read.part.0+0xa8/0x118 splice_direct_to_actor+0xbc/0x288 do_splice_direct+0x9c/0x108 do_sendfile+0x328/0x468 __arm64_sys_sendfile64+0x8c/0x148 invoke_syscall+0x4c/0x118 el0_svc_common.constprop.0+0xc8/0xf0 do_el0_svc+0x24/0x38 el0_svc+0x4c/0x1f8 el0t_64_sync_handler+0xc0/0xc8 el0t_64_sync+0x188/0x190

Weakness: CWE-667

Which versions are affected by CVE-2024-36882?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2024-36882?

Apply the vendor's patch.

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-2024-36882 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2024-36882 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as BELL-CVE-2024-36882, DEBIAN-CVE-2024-36882, UBUNTU-CVE-2024-36882.

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