CVE-2025-21816

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

hrtimers: Force migrate away hrtimers queued after CPUHP_AP_HRTIMERS_DYING

hrtimers are migrated away from the dying CPU to any online target at
the CPUHP_AP_HRTIMERS_DYING stage in order not to delay bandwidth timers
handling tasks involved in the CPU hotplug forward progress.

However wakeups can still be performed by the outgoing CPU after
CPUHP_AP_HRTIMERS_DYING. Those can result again in bandwidth timers being
armed. Depending on several considerations (crystal ball power management
based election, earliest timer already enqueued, timer migration enabled or
not), the target may eventually be the current CPU even if offline. If that
happens, the timer is eventually ignored.

The most notable example is RCU which had to deal with each and every of
those wake-ups by deferring them to an online CPU, along with related
workarounds:

_ e787644caf76 (rcu: Defer RCU kthreads wakeup when CPU is dying)
_ 9139f93209d1 (rcu/nocb: Fix RT throttling hrtimer armed from offline CPU)
_ f7345ccc62a4 (rcu/nocb: Fix rcuog wake-up from offline softirq)

The problem isn't confined to RCU though as the stop machine kthread
(which runs CPUHP_AP_HRTIMERS_DYING) reports its completion at the end
of its work through cpu_stop_signal_done() and performs a wake up that
eventually arms the deadline server timer:

   WARNING: CPU: 94 PID: 588 at kernel/time/hrtimer.c:1086 hrtimer_start_range_ns+0x289/0x2d0
   CPU: 94 UID: 0 PID: 588 Comm: migration/94 Not tainted
   Stopper: multi_cpu_stop+0x0/0x120 <- stop_machine_cpuslocked+0x66/0xc0
   RIP: 0010:hrtimer_start_range_ns+0x289/0x2d0
   Call Trace:
   <TASK>
     start_dl_timer
     enqueue_dl_entity
     dl_server_start
     enqueue_task_fair
     enqueue_task
     ttwu_do_activate
     try_to_wake_up
     complete
     cpu_stopper_thread

Instead of providing yet another bandaid to work around the situation, fix
it in the hrtimers infrastructure instead: always migrate away a timer to
an online target whenever it is enqueued from an offline CPU.

This will also allow to revert all the above RCU disgraceful hacks.
ProviderTypeBase ScoreAtk. VectorAtk. ComplexityPriv. RequiredVector
NISTNIST
UNKNOWN
---
LinuxCNA
---
---
Awaiting analysis
This vulnerability is currently awaiting analysis.
Base Score
CVSS 3.x
EPSS Score
Percentile: 6%
Debian logo
Debian Releases
Debian Product
Codename
linux
bullseye
vulnerable
bullseye (security)
vulnerable
bookworm
vulnerable
bookworm (security)
vulnerable
trixie
6.12.27-1
fixed
sid
6.12.30-1
fixed