In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: perf/core: Fix system hang caused by cpu-clock usage cpu-clock usage by the async-profiler tool can trigger a system hang, which got bisected back to the following com…

Overview

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

perf/core: Fix system hang caused by cpu-clock usage

cpu-clock usage by the async-profiler tool can trigger a system hang, which got bisected back to the following commit by Octavia Togami:

18dbcbfabfff ("perf: Fix the POLL_HUP delivery breakage") causes this issue

The root cause of the hang is that cpu-clock is a special type of SW event which relies on hrtimers. The __perf_event_overflow() callback is invoked from the hrtimer handler for cpu-clock events, and __perf_event_overflow() tries to call cpu_clock_event_stop() to stop the event, which calls htimer_cancel() to cancel the hrtimer.

But that's a recursion into the hrtimer code from a hrtimer handler, which (unsurprisingly) deadlocks.

To fix this bug, use hrtimer_try_to_cancel() instead, and set the PERF_HES_STOPPED flag, which causes perf_swevent_hrtimer() to stop the event once it sees the PERF_HES_STOPPED flag.

[ mingo: Fixed the comments and improved the changelog. ]

Remediation

Refer to the linked advisories for vendor-supplied fixes and affected version ranges.