Linux KernelOperating system · Linux

CVE-2024-57939

MEDIUM · 5.5 CVSS v3.1 Published 2025-01-21
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to 5.10.234 or later.
See remediation →
57/100
Remediation priority · Elevated
Zero-click Patch available

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: riscv: Fix sleeping in invalid context in die() die() can be called in exception handler, and therefore cannot sleep. However, die() takes spinlock_t which can sleep with PREEMPT_RT enabled. That causes the following warning: BUG: sleeping function called from invalid context at kernel/locking/spinlock_rt.c:48 in_atomic(): 1, irqs_disabled(): 1, non_block: 0, pid: 285, name: mutex preempt_count: 110001, expected: 0 RCU nest depth: 0, expected: 0 CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 285 Comm: mutex Not tainted 6.12.0-rc7-00022-ge19049cf7d56-dirty #234 Hardware name: riscv-virtio,qemu (DT) Call Trace: dump_backtrace+0x1c/0x24 show_stack+0x2c/0x38 dump_stack_lvl+0x5a/0x72 dump_stack+0x14/0x1c __might_resched+0x130/0x13a rt_spin_lock+0x2a/0x5c die+0x24/0x112 do_trap_insn_illegal+0xa0/0xea _new_vmalloc_restore_context_a0+0xcc/0xd8 Oops - illegal instruction [#1] Switch to use raw_spinlock_t, which does not sleep even with PREEMPT_RT enabled.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis

A detailed technical summary for this CVE is being prepared.

Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.

NVD · CPE data
Linux KernelOperating system
Affected:>= 4.15, < 5.10.234>= 5.11, <= 5.15.177>= 5.16, <= 6.1.125>= 6.2, <= 6.6.72>= 6.7, <= 6.12.10= 6.13

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
Low
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

dbcve · scoped
Upgrade available Upgrade to 5.10.234 or later
Fixed in 5.10.234
Vendor patch git.kernel.org →
Recommended fix High confidence

Upgrade to kernel >= 5.10.234 (for 5.10.x), >= 5.15.178 (for 5.15.x), >= 6.1.126 (for 6.1.x), >= 6.6.73 (for 6.6.x), or a later stable release

  1. Apply the vendor patch commit 10c24df2e303f517fab0359392c11b6b1d553f2b to the kernel source code, which changes spinlock_t to raw_spinlock_t in the RISC-V die() function to prevent sleeping in exception handler context
  2. Rebuild the kernel with the applied fix
  3. Deploy the new kernel and reboot
Caveat Minor: raw_spinlock_t has slightly different behavior under PREEMPT_RT (no priority inheritance), but this is appropriate for exception handler context where sleeping is not allowed

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2024-57939 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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