CVE-2024-50095 RDMA/mad: Improve handling of timed out WRs of mad agent

High 7.5 Published 5 Nov 2024 Updated 15 Oct 2026

A locking contention issue in the Linux kernel RDMA MAD agent can cause a soft lockup, leading to a denial of service.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Not needed
Attackable: Over the internet
Victim action needed: Not needed
Fix: Available

What is CVE-2024-50095?

CVE-2024-50095 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 5 Nov 2024. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

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

RDMA/mad: Improve handling of timed out WRs of mad agent

Current timeout handler of mad agent acquires/releases mad_agent_priv lock for every timed out WRs. This causes heavy locking contention when higher no. of WRs are to be handled inside timeout handler.

This leads to softlockup with below trace in some use cases where rdma-cm path is used to establish connection between peer nodes

Trace: ----- BUG: soft lockup - CPU#4 stuck for 26s! [kworker/u128:3:19767] CPU: 4 PID: 19767 Comm: kworker/u128:3 Kdump: loaded Tainted: G OE ------- --- 5.14.0-427.13.1.el9_4.x86_64 #1 Hardware name: Dell Inc. PowerEdge R740/01YM03, BIOS 2.4.8 11/26/2019 Workqueue: ib_mad1 timeout_sends [ib_core] RIP: 0010:__do_softirq+0x78/0x2ac RSP: 0018:ffffb253449e4f98 EFLAGS: 00000246 RAX: 00000000ffffffff RBX: 0000000000000000 RCX: 000000000000001f RDX: 000000000000001d RSI: 000000003d1879ab RDI: fff363b66fd3a86b RBP: ffffb253604cbcd8 R08: 0000009065635f3b R09: 0000000000000000 R10: 0000000000000040 R11: ffffb253449e4ff8 R12: 0000000000000000 R13: 0000000000000000 R14: 0000000000000000 R15: 0000000000000040 FS: 0000000000000000(0000) GS:ffff8caa1fc80000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: 00007fd9ec9db900 CR3: 0000000891934006 CR4: 00000000007706e0 DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000 DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000fffe0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400 PKRU: 55555554 Call Trace: <IRQ> ? show_trace_log_lvl+0x1c4/0x2df ? show_trace_log_lvl+0x1c4/0x2df ? __irq_exit_rcu+0xa1/0xc0 ? watchdog_timer_fn+0x1b2/0x210 ? __pfx_watchdog_timer_fn+0x10/0x10 ? __hrtimer_run_queues+0x127/0x2c0 ? hrtimer_interrupt+0xfc/0x210 ? __sysvec_apic_timer_interrupt+0x5c/0x110 ? sysvec_apic_timer_interrupt+0x37/0x90 ? asm_sysvec_apic_timer_interrupt+0x16/0x20 ? __do_softirq+0x78/0x2ac ? __do_softirq+0x60/0x2ac __irq_exit_rcu+0xa1/0xc0 sysvec_call_function_single+0x72/0x90 </IRQ> <TASK> asm_sysvec_call_function_single+0x16/0x20 RIP: 0010:_raw_spin_unlock_irq+0x14/0x30 RSP: 0018:ffffb253604cbd88 EFLAGS: 00000247 RAX: 000000000001960d RBX: 0000000000000002 RCX: ffff8cad2a064800 RDX: 000000008020001b RSI: 0000000000000001 RDI: ffff8cad5d39f66c RBP: ffff8cad5d39f600 R08: 0000000000000001 R09: 0000000000000000 R10: ffff8caa443e0c00 R11: ffffb253604cbcd8 R12: ffff8cacb8682538 R13: 0000000000000005 R14: ffffb253604cbd90 R15: ffff8cad5d39f66c cm_process_send_error+0x122/0x1d0 [ib_cm] timeout_sends+0x1dd/0x270 [ib_core] process_one_work+0x1e2/0x3b0 ? __pfx_worker_thread+0x10/0x10 worker_thread+0x50/0x3a0 ? __pfx_worker_thread+0x10/0x10 kthread+0xdd/0x100 ? __pfx_kthread+0x10/0x10 ret_from_fork+0x29/0x50 </TASK>

Simplified timeout handler by creating local list of timed out WRs and invoke send handler post creating the list. The new method acquires/ releases lock once to fetch the list and hence helps to reduce locking contetiong when processing higher no. of WRs

Which versions are affected by CVE-2024-50095?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2024-50095?

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-2024-50095 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2024-50095 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as AZL-52631, BELL-CVE-2024-50095, DEBIAN-CVE-2024-50095, GHSA-935g-fc8j-74rf, UBUNTU-CVE-2024-50095.