Bug 2426135 (CVE-2023-54316)

Summary: CVE-2023-54316 kernel: refscale: Fix uninitalized use of wait_queue_head_t
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
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Version: unspecifiedKeywords: Security
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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A use of uninitialized data was found in the refscale test module. The wait_queue_head_t is used before being initialized, causing a race condition that can crash the kernel during testing.
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2025-12-30 13:11:30 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

refscale: Fix uninitalized use of wait_queue_head_t

Running the refscale test occasionally crashes the kernel with the
following error:

[ 8569.952896] BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: ffffffffffffffe8
[ 8569.952900] #PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode
[ 8569.952902] #PF: error_code(0x0000) - not-present page
[ 8569.952904] PGD c4b048067 P4D c4b049067 PUD c4b04b067 PMD 0
[ 8569.952910] Oops: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT_RT SMP NOPTI
[ 8569.952916] Hardware name: Dell Inc. PowerEdge R750/0WMWCR, BIOS 1.2.4 05/28/2021
[ 8569.952917] RIP: 0010:prepare_to_wait_event+0x101/0x190
  :
[ 8569.952940] Call Trace:
[ 8569.952941]  <TASK>
[ 8569.952944]  ref_scale_reader+0x380/0x4a0 [refscale]
[ 8569.952959]  kthread+0x10e/0x130
[ 8569.952966]  ret_from_fork+0x1f/0x30
[ 8569.952973]  </TASK>

The likely cause is that init_waitqueue_head() is called after the call to
the torture_create_kthread() function that creates the ref_scale_reader
kthread.  Although this init_waitqueue_head() call will very likely
complete before this kthread is created and starts running, it is
possible that the calling kthread will be delayed between the calls to
torture_create_kthread() and init_waitqueue_head().  In this case, the
new kthread will use the waitqueue head before it is properly initialized,
which is not good for the kernel's health and well-being.

The above crash happened here:

	static inline void __add_wait_queue(...)
	{
		:
		if (!(wq->flags & WQ_FLAG_PRIORITY)) <=== Crash here

The offset of flags from list_head entry in wait_queue_entry is
-0x18. If reader_tasks[i].wq.head.next is NULL as allocated reader_task
structure is zero initialized, the instruction will try to access address
0xffffffffffffffe8, which is exactly the fault address listed above.

This commit therefore invokes init_waitqueue_head() before creating
the kthread.