Bug 2451277 (CVE-2026-23287)

Summary: CVE-2026-23287 kernel: irqchip/sifive-plic: Fix frozen interrupt due to affinity setting
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security <prodsec-ir-bot>
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Version: unspecifiedKeywords: Security
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OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's irqchip/sifive-plic component. When an interrupt's affinity setting is changed while a hardware thread (hart) is still processing the interrupt, the Programmable Interrupt Controller (PLIC) may ignore the interrupt completion message. This can lead to the interrupt becoming frozen, causing a Denial of Service (DoS) where affected hardware, such as a Universal Asynchronous Receiver-Transmitter (UART) port, becomes unresponsive.
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-03-25 11:08:27 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

irqchip/sifive-plic: Fix frozen interrupt due to affinity setting

PLIC ignores interrupt completion message for disabled interrupt, explained
by the specification:

    The PLIC signals it has completed executing an interrupt handler by
    writing the interrupt ID it received from the claim to the
    claim/complete register. The PLIC does not check whether the completion
    ID is the same as the last claim ID for that target. If the completion
    ID does not match an interrupt source that is currently enabled for
    the target, the completion is silently ignored.

This caused problems in the past, because an interrupt can be disabled
while still being handled and plic_irq_eoi() had no effect. That was fixed
by checking if the interrupt is disabled, and if so enable it, before
sending the completion message. That check is done with irqd_irq_disabled().

However, that is not sufficient because the enable bit for the handling
hart can be zero despite irqd_irq_disabled(d) being false. This can happen
when affinity setting is changed while a hart is still handling the
interrupt.

This problem is easily reproducible by dumping a large file to uart (which
generates lots of interrupts) and at the same time keep changing the uart
interrupt's affinity setting. The uart port becomes frozen almost
instantaneously.

Fix this by checking PLIC's enable bit instead of irqd_irq_disabled().