Bug 2356618 (CVE-2025-21919)

Summary: CVE-2025-21919 kernel: sched/fair: Fix potential memory corruption in child_cfs_rq_on_list
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedCC: dfreiber, drow, jburrell, vkumar
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2025-04-01 16:02:47 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

sched/fair: Fix potential memory corruption in child_cfs_rq_on_list

child_cfs_rq_on_list attempts to convert a 'prev' pointer to a cfs_rq.
This 'prev' pointer can originate from struct rq's leaf_cfs_rq_list,
making the conversion invalid and potentially leading to memory
corruption. Depending on the relative positions of leaf_cfs_rq_list and
the task group (tg) pointer within the struct, this can cause a memory
fault or access garbage data.

The issue arises in list_add_leaf_cfs_rq, where both
cfs_rq->leaf_cfs_rq_list and rq->leaf_cfs_rq_list are added to the same
leaf list. Also, rq->tmp_alone_branch can be set to rq->leaf_cfs_rq_list.

This adds a check `if (prev == &rq->leaf_cfs_rq_list)` after the main
conditional in child_cfs_rq_on_list. This ensures that the container_of
operation will convert a correct cfs_rq struct.

This check is sufficient because only cfs_rqs on the same CPU are added
to the list, so verifying the 'prev' pointer against the current rq's list
head is enough.

Fixes a potential memory corruption issue that due to current struct
layout might not be manifesting as a crash but could lead to unpredictable
behavior when the layout changes.

Comment 3 errata-xmlrpc 2025-06-02 10:06:56 UTC
This issue has been addressed in the following products:

  Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10

Via RHSA-2025:8374 https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2025:8374