CVE-2025-38234: kernel: sched/rt: Fix race in push_rt_task
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: 2025-07-04T00:00:00+00:00

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

sched/rt: Fix race in push_rt_task

Overview
========
When a CPU chooses to call push_rt_task and picks a task to push to
another CPU's runqueue then it will call find_lock_lowest_rq method
which would take a double lock on both CPUs' runqueues. If one of the
locks aren't readily available, it may lead to dropping the current
runqueue lock and reacquiring both the locks at once. During this window
it is possible that the task is already migrated and is running on some
other CPU. These cases are already handled. However, if the task is
migrated and has already been executed and another CPU is now trying to
wake it up (ttwu) such that it is queued again on the runqeue
(on_rq is 1) and also if the task was run by the same CPU, then the
current checks will pass even though the task was migrated out and is no
longer in the pushable tasks list.

Crashes
=======
This bug resulted in quite a few flavors of crashes triggering kernel
panics with various crash signatures such as assert failures, page
faults, null pointer dereferences, and queue corruption errors all
coming from scheduler itself.

Some of the crashes:
-> kernel BUG at kernel/sched/rt.c:1616! BUG_ON(idx >= MAX_RT_PRIO)
   Call Trace:
   ? __die_body+0x1a/0x60
   ? die+0x2a/0x50
   ? do_trap+0x85/0x100
   ? pick_next_task_rt+0x6e/0x1d0
   ? do_error_trap+0x64/0xa0
   ? pick_next_task_rt+0x6e/0x1d0
   ? exc_invalid_op+0x4c/0x60
   ? pick_next_task_rt+0x6e/0x1d0
   ? asm_exc_invalid_op+0x12/0x20
   ? pick_next_task_rt+0x6e/0x1d0
   __schedule+0x5cb/0x790
   ? update_ts_time_stats+0x55/0x70
   schedule_idle+0x1e/0x40
   do_idle+0x15e/0x200
   cpu_startup_entry+0x19/0x20
   start_secondary+0x117/0x160
   secondary_startup_64_no_verify+0xb0/0xbb

-> BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 00000000000000c0
   Call Trace:
   ? __die_body+0x1a/0x60
   ? no_context+0x183/0x350
   ? __warn+0x8a/0xe0
   ? exc_page_fault+0x3d6/0x520
   ? asm_exc_page_fault+0x1e/0x30
   ? pick_next_task_rt+0xb5/0x1d0
   ? pick_next_task_rt+0x8c/0x1d0
   __schedule+0x583/0x7e0
   ? update_ts_time_stats+0x55/0x70
   schedule_idle+0x1e/0x40
   do_idle+0x15e/0x200
   cpu_startup_entry+0x19/0x20
   start_secondary+0x117/0x160
   secondary_startup_64_no_verify+0xb0/0xbb

-> BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: ffff9464daea5900
   kernel BUG at kernel/sched/rt.c:1861! BUG_ON(rq->cpu != task_cpu(p))

-> kernel BUG at kernel/sched/rt.c:1055! BUG_ON(!rq->nr_running)
   Call Trace:
   ? __die_body+0x1a/0x60
   ? die+0x2a/0x50
   ? do_trap+0x85/0x100
   ? dequeue_top_rt_rq+0xa2/0xb0
   ? do_error_trap+0x64/0xa0
   ? dequeue_top_rt_rq+0xa2/0xb0
   ? exc_invalid_op+0x4c/0x60
   ? dequeue_top_rt_rq+0xa2/0xb0
   ? asm_exc_invalid_op+0x12/0x20
   ? dequeue_top_rt_rq+0xa2/0xb0
   dequeue_rt_entity+0x1f/0x70
   dequeue_task_rt+0x2d/0x70
   __schedule+0x1a8/0x7e0
   ? blk_finish_plug+0x25/0x40
   schedule+0x3c/0xb0
   futex_wait_queue_me+0xb6/0x120
   futex_wait+0xd9/0x240
   do_futex+0x344/0xa90
   ? get_mm_exe_file+0x30/0x60
   ? audit_exe_compare+0x58/0x70
   ? audit_filter_rules.constprop.26+0x65e/0x1220
   __x64_sys_futex+0x148/0x1f0
   do_syscall_64+0x30/0x80
   entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x62/0xc7

-> BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: ffff8cf3608bc2c0
   Call Trace:
   ? __die_body+0x1a/0x60
   ? no_context+0x183/0x350
   ? spurious_kernel_fault+0x171/0x1c0
   ? exc_page_fault+0x3b6/0x520
   ? plist_check_list+0x15/0x40
   ? plist_check_list+0x2e/0x40
   ? asm_exc_page_fault+0x1e/0x30
   ? _cond_resched+0x15/0x30
   ? futex_wait_queue_me+0xc8/0x120
   ? futex_wait+0xd9/0x240
   ? try_to_wake_up+0x1b8/0x490
   ? futex_wake+0x78/0x160
   ? do_futex+0xcd/0xa90
   ? plist_check_list+0x15/0x40
   ? plist_check_list+0x2e/0x40
   ? plist_del+0x6a/0xd0
   ? plist_check_list+0x15/0x40
   ? plist_check_list+0x2e/0x40
   ? dequeue_pushable_task+0x20/0x70
   ? __schedule+0x382/0x7e0
   ? asm_sysvec_reschedule_i
---truncated---


Affected upstream versions: 2.6.25
Fixed upstream versions: 0, 6.12.64, 6.15.4, 6.16, 6.6.124
Upstream repository: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git
Upstream fix commit: 9f6022b2573ae068793810db719e131df3ded405