kasan: fix cache shrink race with CPU hotplug

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: kasan: fix cache shrink race with CPU hotplug kasan_quarantine_remove_cache() first invokes per_cpu_remove_cache() on all online CPUs. Each callback moves objects belonging to the cache from cpu_quarantine to the CPU's shrink_qlist, where they can later be freed from task context. kmem_cache_destroy() invokes the quarantine removal path while holding cpus_read_lock(), but kmem_cache_shrink() does not. The latter can therefore race with CPU offlining as follows: kmem_cache_shrink() CPU hotplug ------------------- ----------- on_each_cpu() CPU1 moves objects to CPU1's shrink_qlist on_each_cpu() returns CPU1 goes offline kasan_cpu_offline() drains cpu_quarantine leaves shrink_qlist untouched for_each_online_cpu() skips CPU1 The objects left on CPU1's shrink_qlist are not returned to the slab allocator. This may prevent kmem_cache_shrink() from releasing slabs that would otherwise become empty. If CPU1 remains offline, a later kmem_cache_destroy() also skips the list and can report that the cache still contains objects. An intermittent occurrence was observed with a virtio-9p filesystem. The mount and umount commands both returned 0, but the kernel logged the following during the userspace-triggered teardown: [ 2994.380134][ T111] BUG 9p-fcall-cache-1 (Tainted: G B ): Objects remaining on __kmem_cache_shutdown() [ 2994.381140][ T111] Object 0xff11000004361118 @offset=4376 [ 2994.381607][ T111] Allocated in p9_fcall_init+0x201/0x400 age=19564 cpu=1 pid=104 [ 2994.382591][ T111] p9_fcall_init+0x201/0x400 [ 2994.382810][ T111] p9_tag_alloc+0x12f/0x700 [ 2994.382982][ T111] p9_client_prepare_req+0x102/0x3e0 [ 2994.383165][ T111] p9_client_rpc+0x1ab/0xa50 [ 2994.383334][ T111] p9_client_getattr_dotl+0xb0/0x1a0 [ 2994.383515][ T111] v9fs_vfs_getattr_dotl+0x115/0x360 [ 2994.383719][ T111] vfs_getattr_nosec+0x22c/0x3a0 [ 2994.383910][ T111] vfs_statx+0xd7/0x170 [ 2994.384062][ T111] vfs_fstatat+0x45/0x80 [ 2994.384215][ T111] __do_sys_newfstatat+0x84/0xe0 [ 2994.384386][ T111] do_syscall_64+0x115/0x6a0 [ 2994.384566][ T111] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x77/0x7f [ 2994.399720][ T111] WARNING: mm/slub.c:1244 at __kmem_cache_shutdown+0x363/0x500, CPU#0: busybox/111 [ 2994.405655][ T111] Call Trace: [ 2994.406325][ T111] kmem_cache_destroy+0x73/0x1b0 [ 2994.406630][ T111] p9_client_destroy+0x271/0x3c0 [ 2994.407210][ T111] v9fs_session_close+0x3c/0x260 [ 2994.407409][ T111] v9fs_kill_super+0x48/0x90 [ 2994.407584][ T111] deactivate_locked_super+0xa3/0x160 [ 2994.407778][ T111] cleanup_mnt+0x1dd/0x3e0 Thus, a successful umount left objects in the 9p fcall cache and prevented the cache from being destroyed cleanly. Per-CPU shrink_qlist storage exists for every possible CPU, and each list is protected by its own raw spinlock. Iterate over possible CPUs so that a list populated before its CPU went offline is drained as well. for_each_possible_cpu() can do more work than for_each_online_cpu(), but this change only affects CONFIG_KASAN_GENERIC kernels. The extra work is limited to cache shrink and cache destruction paths and does not affect the normal allocation/free fast path. It adds one raw-spinlock-protected scan of each possible CPU's shrink list. These lists are normally empty; a non-empty list is traversed to remove objects belonging to the cache being shrunk or destroyed.

Published

Sep 24, 2026

Updated

Sep 24, 2026

EPSS

0.2% · 5th percentile

CWE

—