published December 9, 2025
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
perf/core: Fix system hang caused by cpu-clock usage
cpu-clock usage by the async-profiler tool can trigger a system hang,
which got bisected back to the following commit by Octavia Togami:
18dbcbfabfff ("perf: Fix the POLL_HUP delivery breakage") causes this issue
The root cause of the hang is that cpu-clock is a special type of SW
event which relies on hrtimers. The __perf_event_overflow() callback
is invoked from the hrtimer handler for cpu-clock events, and
__perf_event_overflow() tries to call cpu_clock_event_stop()
to stop the event, which calls htimer_cancel() to cancel the hrtimer.
But that's a recursion into the hrtimer code from a hrtimer handler,
which (unsurprisingly) deadlocks.
To fix this bug, use hrtimer_try_to_cancel() instead, and set
the PERF_HES_STOPPED flag, which causes perf_swevent_hrtimer()
to stop the event once it sees the PERF_HES_STOPPED flag.
[ mingo: Fixed the comments and improved the changelog. ]