CVE-2024-42096

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

x86: stop playing stack games in profile_pc()

The 'profile_pc()' function is used for timer-based profiling, which

isn't really all that relevant any more to begin with, but it also ends

up making assumptions based on the stack layout that aren't necessarily

valid.

Basically, the code tries to account the time spent in spinlocks to the

caller rather than the spinlock, and while I support that as a concept,

it's not worth the code complexity or the KASAN warnings when no serious

profiling is done using timers anyway these days.

And the code really does depend on stack layout that is only true in the

simplest of cases. We've lost the comment at some point (I think when

the 32-bit and 64-bit code was unified), but it used to say:

Assume the lock function has either no stack frame or a copy

of eflags from PUSHF.

which explains why it just blindly loads a word or two straight off the

stack pointer and then takes a minimal look at the values to just check

if they might be eflags or the return pc:

Eflags always has bits 22 and up cleared unlike kernel addresses

but that basic stack layout assumption assumes that there isn't any lock

debugging etc going on that would complicate the code and cause a stack

frame.

It causes KASAN unhappiness reported for years by syzkaller [1] and

others [2].

With no real practical reason for this any more, just remove the code.

Just for historical interest, here's some background commits relating to

this code from 2006:

0cb91a229364 ("i386: Account spinlocks to the caller during profiling for !FP kernels")

31679f38d886 ("Simplify profile_pc on x86-64")

and a code unification from 2009:

ef4512882dbe ("x86: time_32/64.c unify profile_pc")

but the basics of this thing actually goes back to before the git tree.