Affected: Linux

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

ACPI: APEI: send SIGBUS to current task if synchronous memory error not recovered

If a synchronous error is detected as a result of user-space process triggering a 2-bit uncorrected error, the CPU will take a synchronous error exception such as Synchronous External Abort (SEA) on Arm64. The kernel will queue a memory_failure() work which poisons the related page, unmaps the page, and then sends a SIGBUS to the process, so that a system wide panic can be avoided.

However, no memory_failure() work will be queued when abnormal synchronous errors occur. These errors can include situations like invalid PA, unexpected severity, no memory failure config support, invalid GUID section, etc. In such a case, the user-space process will trigger SEA again. This loop can potentially exceed the platform firmware threshold or even trigger a kernel hard lockup, leading to a system reboot.

Fix it by performing a force kill if no memory_failure() work is queued for synchronous errors.

[ rjw: Changelog edits ]