Files
linux/kernel
Jann Horn c1fa0bb633 exit: prevent preemption of oopsing TASK_DEAD task
When an already-exiting task oopses, make_task_dead() currently calls
do_task_dead() with preemption enabled.  That is forbidden:
do_task_dead() calls __schedule(), which has a comment saying "WARNING:
must be called with preemption disabled!".

If an oopsing task is preempted in do_task_dead(), between becoming
TASK_DEAD and entering the scheduler explicitly, bad things happen:
finish_task_switch() assumes that once the scheduler has switched away
from a TASK_DEAD task, the task can never run again and its stack is no
longer needed; but that assumption apparently doesn't hold if the dead
task was preempted (the SM_PREEMPT case).

This means that the scheduler ends up repeatedly dropping references on
the dead task's stack, which can lead to use-after-free or double-free
of the entire task stack; in other words, two tasks can end up running
on the same stack, resulting in various kinds of memory corruption.

(This does not just affect "recursively oopsing" tasks; it is enough to
oops once during task exit, for example in a file_operations::release
handler)

Fixes: 7f80a2fd7d ("exit: Stop poorly open coding do_task_dead in make_task_dead")
Cc: stable@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>
Acked-by: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2026-05-11 08:55:11 -07:00
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