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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2024-46797 json

powerpc/qspinlock: Fix deadlock in MCS queue

published 2024-09-18 2 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2024-42058

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 5%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

powerpc/qspinlock: Fix deadlock in MCS queue

If an interrupt occurs in queued_spin_lock_slowpath() after we increment qnodesp->count and before node->lock is initialized, another CPU might see stale lock values in get_tail_qnode(). If the stale lock value happens to match the lock on that CPU, then we write to the "next" pointer of the wrong qnode. This causes a deadlock as the former CPU, once it becomes the head of the MCS queue, will spin indefinitely until it's "next" pointer is set by its successor in the queue.

Running stress-ng on a 16 core (16EC/16VP) shared LPAR, results in occasional lockups similar to the following:

$ stress-ng --all 128 --vm-bytes 80% --aggressive \ --maximize --oomable --verify --syslog \ --metrics --times --timeout 5m

watchdog: CPU 15 Hard LOCKUP ...... NIP [c0000000000b78f4] queued_spin_lock_slowpath+0x1184/0x1490 LR [c000000001037c5c] _raw_spin_lock+0x6c/0x90 Call Trace: 0xc000002cfffa3bf0 (unreliable) _raw_spin_lock+0x6c/0x90 raw_spin_rq_lock_nested.part.135+0x4c/0xd0 sched_ttwu_pending+0x60/0x1f0 __flush_smp_call_function_queue+0x1dc/0x670 smp_ipi_demux_relaxed+0xa4/0x100 xive_muxed_ipi_action+0x20/0x40 __handle_irq_event_percpu+0x80/0x240 handle_irq_event_percpu+0x2c/0x80 handle_percpu_irq+0x84/0xd0 generic_handle_irq+0x54/0x80 __do_irq+0xac/0x210 __do_IRQ+0x74/0xd0 0x0 do_IRQ+0x8c/0x170 hardware_interrupt_common_virt+0x29c/0x2a0 --- interrupt: 500 at queued_spin_lock_slowpath+0x4b8/0x1490 ...... NIP [c0000000000b6c28] queued_spin_lock_slowpath+0x4b8/0x1490 LR [c000000001037c5c] _raw_spin_lock+0x6c/0x90 --- interrupt: 500 0xc0000029c1a41d00 (unreliable) _raw_spin_lock+0x6c/0x90 futex_wake+0x100/0x260 do_futex+0x21c/0x2a0 sys_futex+0x98/0x270 system_call_exception+0x14c/0x2f0 system_call_vectored_common+0x15c/0x2ec

The following code flow illustrates how the deadlock occurs. For the sake of brevity, assume that both locks (A and B) are contended and we call the queued_spin_lock_slowpath() function.

CPU0 CPU1 ---- ---- spin_lock_irqsave(A) | spin_unlock_irqrestore(A) | spin_lock(B) | | | ▼ | id = qnodesp->count++; | (Note that nodes[0].lock == A) | | | ▼ | Interrupt | (happens before "nodes[0].lock = B") | | | ▼ | spin_lock_irqsave(A) | | | ▼ | id = qnodesp->count++ | nodes[1].lock = A | | | ▼ | Tail of MCS queue | | spin_lock_irqsave(A) ▼ | Head of MCS queue ▼ | CPU0 is previous tail ▼ | Spin indefinitely ▼ (until "nodes[1].next != NULL") prev = get_tail_qnode(A, CPU0) | ▼ prev == &qnodes[CPU0].nodes[0] (as qnodes ---truncated---

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.6.51, 6.10.10, 6.11
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13 6.10.11-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2024-46797

  • linux Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-50.51
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1020.22
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1019.21
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1015.19
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1017.17
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1020.23
  • linux-gkeop Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1002.4
  • linux-raspi Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1016.18

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2024-46797

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • kernel-source Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-24.1
  • kernel-default Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-24.1
  • kernel-kvmsmall Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-24.1
  • kernel-default-base Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-24.1.21.4
  • kernel-livepatch-MICRO-6-0_Update_4 Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 1-1.2
  • kernel-rt Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-22.1
  • kernel-source-rt Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-22.1
  • kernel-livepatch-MICRO-6-0-RT_Update_4 Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 1-1.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2025:20164-1SUSE-SU-2025:20247-1SUSE-SU-2025:20163-1SUSE-SU-2025:20246-1SUSE-SU-2025:20077-1SUSE-SU-2025:20073-1

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2024-46797 updated cvss 4.7

kernel: powerpc/qspinlock: Fix deadlock in MCS queue

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more
    affected: workaround, no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
2 y ago

Exploit prediction

0.16% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 5% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Weakness
Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.