CVE-2026-23113

Published Feb 14, 2026

Last updated 9 days ago

Overview

Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: io_uring/io-wq: check IO_WQ_BIT_EXIT inside work run loop Currently this is checked before running the pending work. Normally this is quite fine, as work items either end up blocking (which will create a new worker for other items), or they complete fairly quickly. But syzbot reports an issue where io-wq takes seemingly forever to exit, and with a bit of debugging, this turns out to be because it queues a bunch of big (2GB - 4096b) reads with a /dev/msr* file. Since this file type doesn't support ->read_iter(), loop_rw_iter() ends up handling them. Each read returns 16MB of data read, which takes 20 (!!) seconds. With a bunch of these pending, processing the whole chain can take a long time. Easily longer than the syzbot uninterruptible sleep timeout of 140 seconds. This then triggers a complaint off the io-wq exit path: INFO: task syz.4.135:6326 blocked for more than 143 seconds. Not tainted syzkaller #0 Blocked by coredump. "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message. task:syz.4.135 state:D stack:26824 pid:6326 tgid:6324 ppid:5957 task_flags:0x400548 flags:0x00080000 Call Trace: <TASK> context_switch kernel/sched/core.c:5256 [inline] __schedule+0x1139/0x6150 kernel/sched/core.c:6863 __schedule_loop kernel/sched/core.c:6945 [inline] schedule+0xe7/0x3a0 kernel/sched/core.c:6960 schedule_timeout+0x257/0x290 kernel/time/sleep_timeout.c:75 do_wait_for_common kernel/sched/completion.c:100 [inline] __wait_for_common+0x2fc/0x4e0 kernel/sched/completion.c:121 io_wq_exit_workers io_uring/io-wq.c:1328 [inline] io_wq_put_and_exit+0x271/0x8a0 io_uring/io-wq.c:1356 io_uring_clean_tctx+0x10d/0x190 io_uring/tctx.c:203 io_uring_cancel_generic+0x69c/0x9a0 io_uring/cancel.c:651 io_uring_files_cancel include/linux/io_uring.h:19 [inline] do_exit+0x2ce/0x2bd0 kernel/exit.c:911 do_group_exit+0xd3/0x2a0 kernel/exit.c:1112 get_signal+0x2671/0x26d0 kernel/signal.c:3034 arch_do_signal_or_restart+0x8f/0x7e0 arch/x86/kernel/signal.c:337 __exit_to_user_mode_loop kernel/entry/common.c:41 [inline] exit_to_user_mode_loop+0x8c/0x540 kernel/entry/common.c:75 __exit_to_user_mode_prepare include/linux/irq-entry-common.h:226 [inline] syscall_exit_to_user_mode_prepare include/linux/irq-entry-common.h:256 [inline] syscall_exit_to_user_mode_work include/linux/entry-common.h:159 [inline] syscall_exit_to_user_mode include/linux/entry-common.h:194 [inline] do_syscall_64+0x4ee/0xf80 arch/x86/entry/syscall_64.c:100 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x77/0x7f RIP: 0033:0x7fa02738f749 RSP: 002b:00007fa0281ae0e8 EFLAGS: 00000246 ORIG_RAX: 00000000000000ca RAX: fffffffffffffe00 RBX: 00007fa0275e6098 RCX: 00007fa02738f749 RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: 0000000000000080 RDI: 00007fa0275e6098 RBP: 00007fa0275e6090 R08: 0000000000000000 R09: 0000000000000000 R10: 0000000000000000 R11: 0000000000000246 R12: 0000000000000000 R13: 00007fa0275e6128 R14: 00007fff14e4fcb0 R15: 00007fff14e4fd98 There's really nothing wrong here, outside of processing these reads will take a LONG time. However, we can speed up the exit by checking the IO_WQ_BIT_EXIT inside the io_worker_handle_work() loop, as syzbot will exit the ring after queueing up all of these reads. Then once the first item is processed, io-wq will simply cancel the rest. That should avoid syzbot running into this complaint again.
Source
416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
NVD status
Modified
Products
linux_kernel

Risk scores

CVSS 3.1

Type
Primary
Base score
5.5
Impact score
3.6
Exploitability score
1.8
Vector string
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Severity
MEDIUM

Weaknesses

nvd@nist.gov
NVD-CWE-noinfo

Social media

Hype score
Not currently trending

Configurations

  1. In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: cgroup: Avoid iteration of dying tasks with zero refcount The commit 260fbcb92bbea ("cgroup: Move dying_tasks cleanup from cgroup_task_release() to cgroup_task_free()") extended the lifetime of tasks on the dying_tasks list. The iterators have provision to go through dying_tasks because of dying threadgroup leaders or explicit CSS_TASK_ITER_WITH_DEAD, however, it was expected that such tasks can obtain a new reference (that is possible before cgroup_task_release()/put_task_struct_rcu_user()). The tasks after cgroup_task_release() and before cgroup_task_free() are subject to race when they may or may not have ->usage count > 0. The race window is between css_task_iter_next() invocations when css_set_lock is released and we may arrive at a new ->task_pos. The iterator should not attempt to resurrect tasks whose ->usage count dropped to zero. (When that happens, __put_task_struct_rcu_cb() is already imminent and the returned task_struct would could be used after free.) As for the fix, we cannot simply check the signal->live count of a task on the dying list because that won't distinguish regular zombies waiting to be reaped from RCU remnant tasks that are going to be free'd. Therefore add an extra check to rule out ->usage==0 tasks from any iteration. The repeat: loop in css_task_iter_advance() doesn't consider ->usage count, so add a new loop to css_task_iter_next() to skip de-used tasks on the dying_list. Rough illustration of the possible race R (reader of cgroup.procs) T (thread) L (group leader) --------------------------------- -------------------------------- -------------------------------- L exits, signal->live > 0 cgroup_task_dead(L) css_set_skip_task_iters() // skips only cset->tasks list_add_tail(&L->cg_list, &cset->dying_tasks) css_task_iter_next() take css_set_lock css_task_iter_advance() leader && signal->live != 0 => it->task_pos = &L->cg_list release css_set_lock T exits --signal->live == 0 cgroup_task_dead(T) // css_set_lock release_task(T) cgroup_task_release(T) release_task(L) // zap_leader cgroup_task_release(L) put_task_struct_rcu_user(L) ...RCU... put_task_struct(L) L->usage = 0 /* L still on dying_tasks */ ...RCU... __put_task_struct(L) css_task_iter_next() // another iteration take css_set_lock it->task_pos = &L->cg_list get_task_struct(L) => addition on 0 drop css_set_lock cgroup_task_free(L) css_set_skip_task_iters() // dying skip comes too late free_task(L) cgroup_procs_show() task_pid_vnr(L)•CVE-2026-98163