sched/fair: Fix fault in reweight_entity

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: sched/fair: Fix fault in reweight_entity Syzbot found a GPF in reweight_entity. This has been bisected to commit 4ef0c5c6b5ba ("kernel/sched: Fix sched_fork() access an invalid sched_task_group") There is a race between sched_post_fork() and setpriority(PRIO_PGRP) within a thread group that causes a null-ptr-deref in reweight_entity() in CFS. The scenario is that the main process spawns number of new threads, which then call setpriority(PRIO_PGRP, 0, -20), wait, and exit. For each of the new threads the copy_process() gets invoked, which adds the new task_struct and calls sched_post_fork() for it. In the above scenario there is a possibility that setpriority(PRIO_PGRP) and set_one_prio() will be called for a thread in the group that is just being created by copy_process(), and for which the sched_post_fork() has not been executed yet. This will trigger a null pointer dereference in reweight_entity(), as it will try to access the run queue pointer, which hasn't been set. Before the mentioned change the cfs_rq pointer for the task has been set in sched_fork(), which is called much earlier in copy_process(), before the new task is added to the thread_group. Now it is done in the sched_post_fork(), which is called after that. To fix the issue the remove the update_load param from the update_load param() function and call reweight_task() only if the task flag doesn't have the TASK_NEW flag set.

Timeline

1. Aug 22, 2024, 1:32 AM UTCCVE published
2. Sep 10, 2024, 3:33 PM UTCCISA SSVC assessment

   Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial

3. May 23, 2026, 3:21 PM UTCRecord last updated

Affected versions

• Linux Linux

  From 5.10.80 · fixed in 5.10.137; From 5.15.3 · fixed in 5.15.27; From 5.14.19 · fixed in 5.15

• Linux Linux

  5.16

References 4