Linux Kernel up to 5.15.10 USB Core hung_task_timeout_secs do_proc_control missing initialization

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability labeled as problematic has been found in Linux Kernel up to 5.15.10. Impacted is the function do_proc_control of the file /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs of the component USB Core. The manipulation results in missing initialization. This vulnerability is identified as CVE-2021-47582. There is not any exploit available. The affected component should be upgraded.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability, which was classified as problematic, was found in Linux Kernel up to 5.15.10. Affected is the function do_proc_control of the file /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs of the component USB Core. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a missing initialization vulnerability. CWE is classifying the issue as CWE-456. The product does not initialize critical variables, which causes the execution environment to use unexpected values. The impact remains unknown. CVE summarizes:

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: USB: core: Make do_proc_control() and do_proc_bulk() killable The USBDEVFS_CONTROL and USBDEVFS_BULK ioctls invoke usb_start_wait_urb(), which contains an uninterruptible wait with a user-specified timeout value. If timeout value is very large and the device being accessed does not respond in a reasonable amount of time, the kernel will complain about "Task X blocked for more than N seconds", as found in testing by syzbot: INFO: task syz-executor.0:8700 blocked for more than 143 seconds. Not tainted 5.14.0-rc7-syzkaller #0 "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message. task:syz-executor.0 state:D stack:23192 pid: 8700 ppid: 8455 flags:0x00004004 Call Trace: context_switch kernel/sched/core.c:4681 [inline] __schedule+0xc07/0x11f0 kernel/sched/core.c:5938 schedule+0x14b/0x210 kernel/sched/core.c:6017 schedule_timeout+0x98/0x2f0 kernel/time/timer.c:1857 do_wait_for_common+0x2da/0x480 kernel/sched/completion.c:85 __wait_for_common kernel/sched/completion.c:106 [inline] wait_for_common kernel/sched/completion.c:117 [inline] wait_for_completion_timeout+0x46/0x60 kernel/sched/completion.c:157 usb_start_wait_urb+0x167/0x550 drivers/usb/core/message.c:63 do_proc_bulk+0x978/0x1080 drivers/usb/core/devio.c:1236 proc_bulk drivers/usb/core/devio.c:1273 [inline] usbdev_do_ioctl drivers/usb/core/devio.c:2547 [inline] usbdev_ioctl+0x3441/0x6b10 drivers/usb/core/devio.c:2713 ... To fix this problem, this patch replaces usbfs's calls to usb_control_msg() and usb_bulk_msg() with special-purpose code that does essentially the same thing (as recommended in the comment for usb_start_wait_urb()), except that it always uses a killable wait and it uses GFP_KERNEL rather than GFP_NOIO.

The advisory is shared for download at git.kernel.org. This vulnerability is traded as CVE-2021-47582 since 05/24/2024. The exploitability is told to be difficult. There are known technical details, but no exploit is available. The current price for an exploit might be approx. USD $0-$5k (estimation calculated on 10/04/2025).

The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 207773 (Oracle Linux 8 : kernel (ELSA-2024-7000)), which helps to determine the existence of the flaw in a target environment.

Upgrading to version 5.15.11 eliminates this vulnerability. Applying the patch 403716741c6c/ae8709b296d8 is able to eliminate this problem. The bugfix is ready for download at git.kernel.org. The best possible mitigation is suggested to be upgrading to the latest version.

The vulnerability is also documented in the databases at Tenable (207773) and CERT Bund (WID-SEC-2024-1418). Once again VulDB remains the best source for vulnerability data.

Affected

• Debian Linux
• Amazon Linux 2
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• Ubuntu Linux
• SUSE Linux
• IBM InfoSphere Guardium
• Oracle Linux
• Oracle VM
• IBM Security Guardium
• RESF Rocky Linux
• Broadcom Brocade SANnav
• Dell NetWorker
• Open Source Linux Kernel
• IBM QRadar SIEM
• Dell Avamar
• IBM Storage Scale
• Juniper Junos Space
• SolarWinds Security Event Manager
• Dell PowerProtect Data Domain

Productinfo

Type

• Operating System

Vendor

• Linux

Name

• Kernel

Version

• 5.15.0
• 5.15.1
• 5.15.2
• 5.15.3
• 5.15.4
• 5.15.5
• 5.15.6
• 5.15.7
• 5.15.8
• 5.15.9
• 5.15.10

License

• open-source

Website

• Vendor: https://www.kernel.org/

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Once again VulDB remains the best source for vulnerability data.

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