CVE-2023-52831 Affecting kernel-rt-kvm package, versions *

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream kernel-rt-kvm package and not the kernel-rt-kvm package as distributed by Centos. See How to fix? for Centos:7 relevant fixed versions and status.

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

cpu/hotplug: Don't offline the last non-isolated CPU

If a system has isolated CPUs via the "isolcpus=" command line parameter, then an attempt to offline the last housekeeping CPU will result in a WARN_ON() when rebuilding the scheduler domains and a subsequent panic due to and unhandled empty CPU mas in partition_sched_domains_locked().

cpuset_hotplug_workfn() rebuild_sched_domains_locked() ndoms = generate_sched_domains(&doms, &attr); cpumask_and(doms[0], top_cpuset.effective_cpus, housekeeping_cpumask(HK_FLAG_DOMAIN));

Thus results in an empty CPU mask which triggers the warning and then the subsequent crash:

WARNING: CPU: 4 PID: 80 at kernel/sched/topology.c:2366 build_sched_domains+0x120c/0x1408 Call trace: build_sched_domains+0x120c/0x1408 partition_sched_domains_locked+0x234/0x880 rebuild_sched_domains_locked+0x37c/0x798 rebuild_sched_domains+0x30/0x58 cpuset_hotplug_workfn+0x2a8/0x930

Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address fffe80027ab37080 partition_sched_domains_locked+0x318/0x880 rebuild_sched_domains_locked+0x37c/0x798

Aside of the resulting crash, it does not make any sense to offline the last last housekeeping CPU.

Prevent this by masking out the non-housekeeping CPUs when selecting a target CPU for initiating the CPU unplug operation via the work queue.

• https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-52831
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3073f6df783d9d75f7f69f73e16c7ef85d6cfb63
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/335a47ed71e332c82339d1aec0c7f6caccfcda13
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3410b702354702b500bde10e3cc1f9db8731d908
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/38685e2a0476127db766f81b1c06019ddc4c9ffa