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Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition ('Infinite Loop')

CVE-2021-47617

Severity Medium
Score 5.5/10

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: PCI: pciehp: Fix infinite loop in IRQ handler upon power fault The Power Fault Detected bit in the Slot Status register differs from all other hotplug events in that it is sticky: It can only be cleared after turning off slot power. Per PCIe r5.0, sec. 6.7.1.8: If a power controller detects a main power fault on the hot-plug slot, it must automatically set its internal main power fault latch [...]. The main power fault latch is cleared when software turns off power to the hot-plug slot. The stickiness used to cause interrupt storms and infinite loops which were fixed in 2009 by commits 5651c48cfafe ("PCI pciehp: fix power fault interrupt storm problem") and 99f0169c17f3 ("PCI: pciehp: enable software notification on empty slots"). Unfortunately in 2020 the infinite loop issue was inadvertently reintroduced by commit 8edf5332c393 ("PCI: pciehp: Fix MSI interrupt race"): The hardirq handler pciehp_isr() clears the PFD bit until pciehp's power_fault_detected flag is set. That happens in the IRQ thread pciehp_ist(), which never learns of the event because the hardirq handler is stuck in an infinite loop. Fix by setting the power_fault_detected flag already in the hardirq handler.

  • LOW
  • LOCAL
  • NONE
  • UNCHANGED
  • NONE
  • LOW
  • NONE
  • HIGH

CWE-835 - Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition

Loops with multiple exits and flags detract from the quality of an application. They tend to make control structures difficult to understand, and introduce the risk of non-termination and other structural problems. The vulnerability “loop with unreachable exit condition” enables attackers to exploit this flaw, leading to denial of service.

References

Advisory Timeline

  • Published