CVE: CVE-2023-53215
Published: 2025-09-15
Description: In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

sched/fair: Don't balance task to its current running CPU

We've run into the case that the balancer tries to balance a migration
disabled task and trigger the warning in set_task_cpu() like below:

 ------------[ cut here ]------------
 WARNING: CPU: 7 PID: 0 at kernel/sched/core.c:3115 set_task_cpu+0x188/0x240
 Modules linked in: hclgevf xt_CHECKSUM ipt_REJECT nf_reject_ipv4 <...snip>
 CPU: 7 PID: 0 Comm: swapper/7 Kdump: loaded Tainted: G           O       6.1.0-rc4+ #1
 Hardware name: Huawei TaiShan 2280 V2/BC82AMDC, BIOS 2280-V2 CS V5.B221.01 12/09/2021
 pstate: 604000c9 (nZCv daIF +PAN -UAO -TCO -DIT -SSBS BTYPE=--)
 pc : set_task_cpu+0x188/0x240
 lr : load_balance+0x5d0/0xc60
 sp : ffff80000803bc70
 x29: ffff80000803bc70 x28: ffff004089e190e8 x27: ffff004089e19040
 x26: ffff007effcabc38 x25: [PII_REDACTED] x24: [PII_REDACTED]
 x23: ffff80000803be84 x22:[PII_REDACTED]00000c x21: ffffb093e79e2a78
 x20:[PII_REDACTED]00000c x19: ffff004089e19040 x18: [PII_REDACTED]
 x17:[PII_REDACTED]001fad x16: [PII_REDACTED] x15: [PII_REDACTED]
 x14: [PII_REDACTED] x13: [PII_REDACTED] x12: [PII_REDACTED]
 x11: [PII_REDACTED] x10: [PII_REDACTED] x9 : ffffb093e4cee530
 x8 : 00000000fffffffe x7 :[PII_REDACTED]ce168a x6 :[PII_REDACTED]00013e
 x5 : 00000000ffffffe1 x4 : [PII_REDACTED] x3 :[PII_REDACTED]000b2a
 x2 :[PII_REDACTED]000b2a x1 : ffffb093e6d6c510 x0 : [PII_REDACTED]
 Call trace:
  set_task_cpu+0x188/0x240
  load_balance+0x5d0/0xc60
  rebalance_domains+0x26c/0x380
  _nohz_idle_balance.isra.0+0x1e0/0x370
  run_rebalance_domains+0x6c/0x80
  __do_softirq+0x128/0x3d8
  ____do_softirq+0x18/0x24
  call_on_irq_stack+0x2c/0x38
  do_softirq_own_stack+0x24/0x3c
  __irq_exit_rcu+0xcc/0xf4
  irq_exit_rcu+0x18/0x24
  el1_interrupt+0x4c/0xe4
  el1h_64_irq_handler+0x18/0x2c
  el1h_64_irq+0x74/0x78
  arch_cpu_idle+0x18/0x4c
  default_idle_call+0x58/0x194
  do_idle+0x244/0x2b0
  cpu_startup_entry+0x30/0x3c
  secondary_start_kernel+0x14c/0x190
  __secondary_switched+0xb0/0xb4
 ---[ end trace [PII_REDACTED] ]---

Further investigation shows that the warning is superfluous, the migration
disabled task is just going to be migrated to its current running CPU.
This is because that on load balance if the dst_cpu is not allowed by the
task, we'll re-select a new_dst_cpu as a candidate. If no task can be
balanced to dst_cpu we'll try to balance the task to the new_dst_cpu
instead. In this case when the migration disabled task is not on CPU it
only allows to run on its current CPU, load balance will select its
current CPU as new_dst_cpu and later triggers the warning above.

The new_dst_cpu is chosen from the env->dst_grpmask. Currently it
contains CPUs in sched_group_span() and if we have overlapped groups it's
possible to run into this case. This patch makes env->dst_grpmask of
group_balance_mask() which exclude any CPUs from the busiest group and
solve the issue. For balancing in a domain with no overlapped groups
the behaviour keeps same as before.
CVSS Score: 7.8 (HIGH)
References: https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0dd37d6dd33a9c23351e6115ae8cdac7863bc7de; https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/32d937f94b7805d4c9028b8727a7d6241547da54; https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/34eb902050d473bb2befa15714fb1d30a0991c15