CVE-2021-46921
CVE-2021-46921CVE-2021-46921
linux / linux_kernel
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
locking/qrwlock: Fix ordering in queued_write_lock_slowpath()
While this code is executed with the wait_lock held, a reader can
acquire the lock without holding wait_lock. The writer side loops
checking the value with the atomic_cond_read_acquire(), but only truly
acquires the lock when the compare-and-exchange is completed
successfully which isn’t ordered. This exposes the window between the
acquire and the cmpxchg to an A-B-A problem which allows reads
following the lock acquisition to observe values speculatively before
the write lock is truly acquired.
We've seen a problem in epoll where the reader does a xchg while
holding the read lock, but the writer can see a value change out from
under it.
Writer | Reader
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ep_scan_ready_list() |
|- write_lock_irq() |
Scoring
| CVSS | 7.8 () |
| Vector | CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H |
| Last modified | 2026-08-04 |