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medium 5.5

CVE-2024-36936 json

efi/unaccepted: touch soft lockup during memory accept

published 2y ago modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2024-36286

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 6%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

efi/unaccepted: touch soft lockup during memory accept

Commit 50e782a86c98 ("efi/unaccepted: Fix soft lockups caused by parallel memory acceptance") has released the spinlock so other CPUs can do memory acceptance in parallel and not triggers softlockup on other CPUs.

However the softlock up was intermittent shown up if the memory of the TD guest is large, and the timeout of softlockup is set to 1 second:

RIP: 0010:_raw_spin_unlock_irqrestore Call Trace: ? __hrtimer_run_queues <IRQ> ? hrtimer_interrupt ? watchdog_timer_fn ? __sysvec_apic_timer_interrupt ? __pfx_watchdog_timer_fn ? sysvec_apic_timer_interrupt </IRQ> ? __hrtimer_run_queues <TASK> ? hrtimer_interrupt ? asm_sysvec_apic_timer_interrupt ? _raw_spin_unlock_irqrestore ? __sysvec_apic_timer_interrupt ? sysvec_apic_timer_interrupt accept_memory try_to_accept_memory do_huge_pmd_anonymous_page get_page_from_freelist __handle_mm_fault __alloc_pages __folio_alloc ? __tdx_hypercall handle_mm_fault vma_alloc_folio do_user_addr_fault do_huge_pmd_anonymous_page exc_page_fault ? __do_huge_pmd_anonymous_page asm_exc_page_fault __handle_mm_fault

When the local irq is enabled at the end of accept_memory(), the softlockup detects that the watchdog on single CPU has not been fed for a while. That is to say, even other CPUs will not be blocked by spinlock, the current CPU might be stunk with local irq disabled for a while, which hurts not only nmi watchdog but also softlockup.

Chao Gao pointed out that the memory accept could be time costly and there was similar report before. Thus to avoid any softlocup detection during this stage, give the softlockup a flag to skip the timeout check at the end of accept_memory(), by invoking touch_softlockup_watchdog().

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.6, 6.6.55, 6.8.10, 6.9
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13 6.8.11-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2024-36936

  • linux Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-40.40
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1013.14
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1012.13
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1008.11
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1010.10
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1012.14
  • linux-raspi Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1009.10
  • linux-riscv Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-40.40.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2024-36936

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 RHEL 9 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5
  • rv RHEL 9 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5
  • perf RHEL 9 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5
  • rtla RHEL 9 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5
  • bpftool RHEL 9 7.4.0-503.11.1.el9_5
  • libperf RHEL 9 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5
  • kernel-rt RHEL 9 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5
  • kernel-64k RHEL 9 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5

red hat advisories RHSA-2024:9315

  • kernel-rt Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-9.1
  • kernel-source-rt Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-9.1
  • kernel-source Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-18.1
  • kernel-default Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-18.1
  • kernel-kvmsmall Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-18.1
  • kernel-default-base Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-17.1.1.51
  • dtb-aarch64 openSUSE Leap 15.5 5.14.21-150500.55.80.1
  • kernel-64kb SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP5, openSUSE Leap 15.5 5.14.21-150500.55.80.2

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2025:20028-1SUSE-SU-2025:20008-1SUSE-SU-2024:3483-1SUSE-SU-2024:3209-1SUSE-SU-2024:3190-1SUSE-SU-2024:2973-1

Is CVE-2024-36936 in your stack? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

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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-2024-36936 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: efi/unaccepted: touch soft lockup during memory accept

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 kernel-rt, kernel-rt-kvm, kernel-rt-core, kernel-rt-modules, kernel-rt-debug-kvm, kernel-rt-debug-core, +12 more
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat CodeReady Linux Builder (v. 9) libperf 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5, kernel-debuginfo-common-s390x 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5, kernel-debuginfo-common-x86_64 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5, kernel-debuginfo-common-aarch64 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5, kernel-debuginfo-common-ppc64le 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5 Red Hat Enterprise Linux AppStream (v. 9) rv 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5, perf 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5, rtla 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5, kernel-devel-matched 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5, kernel-64k-devel-matched 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5, kernel-debug-devel-matched 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5, +6 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux BaseOS (v. 9) bpftool 7.4.0-503.11.1.el9_5, kernel 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5, kernel-64k 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5, kernel-core 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5, kernel-tools 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5, python3-perf 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5, +29 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux Real Time (v. 9) kernel-rt 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5, kernel-rt-core 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5, kernel-rt-modules 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5, kernel-rt-debug-core 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5, kernel-rt-modules-core 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5, kernel-rt-debug-modules 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5, +4 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux Real Time for NFV (v. 9) kernel-rt 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5, kernel-rt-kvm 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5, kernel-rt-core 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5, kernel-rt-modules 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5, kernel-rt-debug-kvm 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5, kernel-rt-debug-core 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5, +6 more
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2024:9315
  • Red Hat CodeReady Linux Builder (v. 9) kernel-cross-headers 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5 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 Red Hat Enterprise Linux AppStream (v. 9) kernel-headers 5.14.0-503.11.1.el9_5
    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
2y ago

Exploit prediction

0.17% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 6% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

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

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