CVE-2022-50116: kernel: tty: n_gsm: fix deadlock and link starvation in outgoing data path
Component: kernel
Severity: Moderate
CVSS v3: 5.5 (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H)
Public date: 2025-06-18T00:00:00+00:00

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

tty: n_gsm: fix deadlock and link starvation in outgoing data path

The current implementation queues up new control and user packets as needed
and processes this queue down to the ldisc in the same code path.
That means that the upper and the lower layer are hard coupled in the code.
Due to this deadlocks can happen as seen below while transmitting data,
especially during ldisc congestion. Furthermore, the data channels starve
the control channel on high transmission load on the ldisc.

Introduce an additional control channel data queue to prevent timeouts and
link hangups during ldisc congestion. This is being processed before the
user channel data queue in gsm_data_kick(), i.e. with the highest priority.
Put the queue to ldisc data path into a workqueue and trigger it whenever
new data has been put into the transmission queue. Change
gsm_dlci_data_sweep() accordingly to fill up the transmission queue until
TX_THRESH_HI. This solves the locking issue, keeps latency low and provides
good performance on high data load.
Note that now all packets from a DLCI are removed from the internal queue
if the associated DLCI was closed. This ensures that no data is sent by the
introduced write task to an already closed DLCI.

BUG: spinlock recursion on CPU#0, test_v24_loop/124
 lock: serial8250_ports+0x3a8/0x7500, .magic: dead4ead, .owner: test_v24_loop/124, .owner_cpu: 0
CPU: 0 PID: 124 Comm: test_v24_loop Tainted: G           O      5.18.0-rc2 #3
Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS 1.15.0-1 04/01/2014
Call Trace:
 <IRQ>
 dump_stack_lvl+0x34/0x44
 do_raw_spin_lock+0x76/0xa0
 _raw_spin_lock_irqsave+0x72/0x80
 uart_write_room+0x3b/0xc0
 gsm_data_kick+0x14b/0x240 [n_gsm]
 gsmld_write_wakeup+0x35/0x70 [n_gsm]
 tty_wakeup+0x53/0x60
 tty_port_default_wakeup+0x1b/0x30
 serial8250_tx_chars+0x12f/0x220
 serial8250_handle_irq.part.0+0xfe/0x150
 serial8250_default_handle_irq+0x48/0x80
 serial8250_interrupt+0x56/0xa0
 __handle_irq_event_percpu+0x78/0x1f0
 handle_irq_event+0x34/0x70
 handle_fasteoi_irq+0x90/0x1e0
 __common_interrupt+0x69/0x100
 common_interrupt+0x48/0xc0
 asm_common_interrupt+0x1e/0x40
RIP: 0010:__do_softirq+0x83/0x34e
Code: 2a 0a ff 0f b7 ed c7 44 24 10 0a 00 00 00 48 c7 c7 51 2a 64 82 e8 2d
e2 d5 ff 65 66 c7 05 83 af 1e 7e 00 00 fb b8 ff ff ff ff <49> c7 c2 40 61
80 82 0f bc c5 41 89 c4 41 83 c4 01 0f 84 e6 00 00
RSP: 0018:ffffc90000003f98 EFLAGS: 00000286
RAX: 00000000ffffffff RBX: 0000000000000000 RCX: 0000000000000000
RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: ffffffff82642a51 RDI: ffffffff825bb5e7
RBP: 0000000000000200 R08: 00000008de3271a8 R09: 0000000000000000
R10: 0000000000000001 R11: 0000000000000000 R12: 0000000000000000
R13: 0000000000000030 R14: 0000000000000000 R15: 0000000000000000
 ? __do_softirq+0x73/0x34e
 irq_exit_rcu+0xb5/0x100
 common_interrupt+0xa4/0xc0
 </IRQ>
 <TASK>
 asm_common_interrupt+0x1e/0x40
RIP: 0010:_raw_spin_unlock_irqrestore+0x2e/0x50
Code: 00 55 48 89 fd 48 83 c7 18 53 48 89 f3 48 8b 74 24 10 e8 85 28 36 ff
48 89 ef e8 cd 58 36 ff 80 e7 02 74 01 fb bf 01 00 00 00 <e8> 3d 97 33 ff
65 8b 05 96 23 2b 7e 85 c0 74 03 5b 5d c3 0f 1f 44
RSP: 0018:ffffc9000020fd08 EFLAGS: 00000202
RAX: 0000000000000000 RBX: 0000000000000246 RCX: 0000000000000000
RDX: 0000000000000004 RSI: ffffffff8257fd74 RDI: 0000000000000001
RBP: ffff8880057de3a0 R08: 00000008de233000 R09: 0000000000000000
R10: 0000000000000001 R11: 0000000000000000 R12: 0000000000000000
R13: 0000000000000100 R14: 0000000000000202 R15: ffff8880057df0b8
 ? _raw_spin_unlock_irqrestore+0x23/0x50
 gsmtty_write+0x65/0x80 [n_gsm]
 n_tty_write+0x33f/0x530
 ? swake_up_all+0xe0/0xe0
 file_tty_write.constprop.0+0x1b1/0x320
 ? n_tty_flush_buffer+0xb0/0xb0
 new_sync_write+0x10c/0x190
 vfs_write+0x282/0x310
 ksys_write+0x68/0xe0
 do_syscall_64+0x3b/0x90
 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x44/0xae
RIP: 0033:0x7f3e5e35c15c
Code: 8b 7c 24 08 89 c5 e8 c5 ff ff ff 89 ef 89 44 24
---truncated---


Affected upstream versions: 2.6.35
Fixed upstream versions: 0, 5.15.209, 5.18.18, 5.19.2, 6.0
Upstream repository: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git
Upstream fix commit: 5020173e7e7725110a8d4be1359bf1dfc4b1814d