In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
xen/balloon: use a kernel thread instead a workqueue
Today the Xen ballooning is done via delayed work in a workqueue. This
might result in workqueue hangups being reported in case of large
amounts of memory are being ballooned in one go (here 16GB):
BUG: workqueue lockup - pool cpus=6 node=0 flags=0x0 nice=0 stuck for 64s!
Showing busy workqueues and worker pools:
workqueue events: flags=0x0
pwq 12: cpus=6 node=0 flags=0x0 nice=0 active=2/256 refcnt=3
in-flight: 229:balloon_process
pending: cache_reap
workqueue events_freezable_power_: flags=0x84
pwq 12: cpus=6 node=0 flags=0x0 nice=0 active=1/256 refcnt=2
pending: disk_events_workfn
workqueue mm_percpu_wq: flags=0x8
pwq 12: cpus=6 node=0 flags=0x0 nice=0 active=1/256 refcnt=2
pending: vmstat_update
pool 12: cpus=6 node=0 flags=0x0 nice=0 hung=64s workers=3 idle: 2222 43
This can easily be avoided by using a dedicated kernel thread for doing
the ballooning work.
CREATE(Triage):(User=admin) CVE-2021-47377 (https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2021-47377)
