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Christian Brauner 4729c7b00a kthread: consolidate kthread exit paths to prevent use-after-free
commit 28aaa9c399 upstream.

Guillaume reported crashes via corrupted RCU callback function pointers
during KUnit testing. The crash was traced back to the pidfs rhashtable
conversion which replaced the 24-byte rb_node with an 8-byte rhash_head
in struct pid, shrinking it from 160 to 144 bytes.

struct kthread (without CONFIG_BLK_CGROUP) is also 144 bytes. With
CONFIG_SLAB_MERGE_DEFAULT and SLAB_HWCACHE_ALIGN both round up to
192 bytes and share the same slab cache. struct pid.rcu.func and
struct kthread.affinity_node both sit at offset 0x78.

When a kthread exits via make_task_dead() it bypasses kthread_exit() and
misses the affinity_node cleanup. free_kthread_struct() frees the memory
while the node is still linked into the global kthread_affinity_list. A
subsequent list_del() by another kthread writes through dangling list
pointers into the freed and reused memory, corrupting the pid's
rcu.func pointer.

Instead of patching free_kthread_struct() to handle the missed cleanup,
consolidate all kthread exit paths. Turn kthread_exit() into a macro
that calls do_exit() and add kthread_do_exit() which is called from
do_exit() for any task with PF_KTHREAD set. This guarantees that
kthread-specific cleanup always happens regardless of the exit path -
make_task_dead(), direct do_exit(), or kthread_exit().

Replace __to_kthread() with a new tsk_is_kthread() accessor in the
public header. Export do_exit() since module code using the
kthread_exit() macro now needs it directly.

Reported-by: Guillaume Tucker <gtucker@gtucker.io>
Tested-by: Guillaume Tucker <gtucker@gtucker.io>
Tested-by: Mark Brown <broonie@kernel.org>
Tested-by: David Gow <davidgow@google.com>
Cc: <stable@vger.kernel.org>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20260224-mittlerweile-besessen-2738831ae7f6@brauner
Co-developed-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Fixes: 4d13f4304f ("kthread: Implement preferred affinity")
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
History 2026-03-19 16:08:32 +01:00
arch powerpc, perf: Check that current->mm is alive before getting user callchain 2026-03-19 16:08:31 +01:00
block block: use trylock to avoid lockdep circular dependency in sysfs 2026-03-12 07:09:59 -04:00
certs sign-file,extract-cert: use pkcs11 provider for OPENSSL MAJOR >= 3 2024-09-20 19:52:48 +03:00
crypto crypto: authencesn - reject too-short AAD (assoclen<8) to match ESP/ESN spec 2026-01-30 10:32:12 +01:00
Documentation KVM: x86: Introduce KVM_X86_QUIRK_VMCS12_ALLOW_FREEZE_IN_SMM 2026-03-19 16:08:24 +01:00
drivers Revert "tcpm: allow looking for role_sw device in the main node" 2026-03-19 16:08:31 +01:00
fs ceph: fix memory leaks in ceph_mdsc_build_path() 2026-03-19 16:08:30 +01:00
include kthread: consolidate kthread exit paths to prevent use-after-free 2026-03-19 16:08:32 +01:00
init printk changes for 6.18 2025-10-04 11:13:11 -07:00
io_uring io_uring/zcrx: fix user_ref race between scrub and refill paths 2026-03-04 07:21:33 -05:00
ipc ipc: don't audit capability check in ipc_permissions() 2026-02-26 14:59:19 -08:00
kernel kthread: consolidate kthread exit paths to prevent use-after-free 2026-03-19 16:08:32 +01:00
lib debugobject: Make it work with deferred page initialization - again 2026-03-12 07:09:08 -04:00
LICENSES LICENSES: Replace the obsolete address of the FSF in the GFDL-1.2 2025-07-24 11:15:39 +02:00
mm mm/kfence: disable KFENCE upon KASAN HW tags enablement 2026-03-19 16:08:29 +01:00
net libceph: admit message frames only in CEPH_CON_S_OPEN state 2026-03-19 16:08:30 +01:00
rust rust: str: make NullTerminatedFormatter public 2026-03-19 16:08:24 +01:00
samples samples/ftrace: Adjust LoongArch register restore order in direct calls 2026-01-08 10:17:11 +01:00
scripts kbuild: rpm-pkg: Disable automatic requires for manual debuginfo package 2026-03-04 07:21:32 -05:00
security apparmor: fix race between freeing data and fs accessing it 2026-03-13 17:23:30 +01:00
sound ALSA: usb-audio: Improve Focusrite sample rate filtering 2026-03-19 16:08:31 +01:00
tools perf synthetic-events: Fix stale build ID in module MMAP2 records 2026-03-19 16:08:20 +01:00
usr gen_init_cpio: Ignore fsync() returning EINVAL on pipes 2025-10-07 09:53:05 -07:00
virt KVM: Don't clobber irqfd routing type when deassigning irqfd 2026-02-11 13:41:44 +01:00
.clang-format memblock: drop for_each_free_mem_pfn_range_in_zone_from() 2025-09-14 08:49:03 +03:00
.clippy.toml rust: clean Rust 1.88.0's warning about clippy::disallowed_macros configuration 2025-05-07 00:11:47 +02:00
.cocciconfig scripts: add Linux .cocciconfig for coccinelle 2016-07-22 12:13:39 +02:00
.editorconfig .editorconfig: remove trim_trailing_whitespace option 2024-06-13 16:47:52 +02:00
.get_maintainer.ignore MAINTAINERS: remove Alyssa Rosenzweig 2025-09-18 21:17:31 +02:00
.gitattributes .gitattributes: set diff driver for Rust source code files 2023-05-31 17:48:25 +02:00
.gitignore .gitignore: ignore compile_commands.json globally 2025-08-12 15:53:55 -07:00
.mailmap 8 hotfixes. 4 are cc:stable, 7 are against mm/. 2025-11-26 12:38:05 -08:00
.pylintrc tools: docs: parse-headers.py: move it from sphinx dir 2025-08-29 15:54:42 -06:00
.rustfmt.toml rust: add .rustfmt.toml 2022-09-28 09:02:20 +02:00
COPYING COPYING: state that all contributions really are covered by this file 2020-02-10 13:32:20 -08:00
CREDITS MAINTAINERS: mark ISDN subsystem as orphan 2025-10-27 17:49:45 -07:00
Kbuild sched: Make migrate_{en,dis}able() inline 2025-09-25 09:57:16 +02:00
Kconfig io_uring: Rename KConfig to Kconfig 2025-02-19 14:53:27 -07:00
MAINTAINERS soc: fixes for 6.18, part 4 2025-11-28 09:57:31 -08:00
Makefile rust: kbuild: allow unused_features 2026-03-19 16:08:24 +01:00
README README: Fix spelling 2024-03-18 03:36:32 -06:00

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the reStructuredText markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.