published September 17, 2026
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
virtio_balloon: quiesce balloon work before device shutdown
Commit 8bd2fa086a04 ("virtio: break and reset virtio devices on
device_shutdown()") added a generic virtio bus .shutdown handler that
breaks and resets every virtio device during device_shutdown(), i.e. on
reboot and kexec.
virtio_balloon provides no .shutdown of its own, so that generic path
runs while the balloon's asynchronous work is still armed. Once the
device has been broken, virtqueue_add_inbuf() in
virtballoon_free_page_report() returns -EIO and trips its
WARN_ON_ONCE(). On a kernel booted with panic_on_warn that turns an
ordinary reboot, for example a kexec based upgrade, into a fatal panic
in the middle of device_shutdown(), so the machine never reaches the
new kernel.
Relaxing that single WARN_ON_ONCE() would only hide the symptom: the
inflate/deflate and OOM paths do not warn, they call
wait_event(vb->acked, ...) and would instead block forever on a broken
queue that can no longer complete. The device has to be quiesced, not
just kept quiet.
Add a .shutdown handler that quiesces the balloon via the shared
virtballoon_quiesce() helper while the device is still alive, and only
then breaks and resets it via virtio_device_shutdown(). Unlike
virtballoon_remove() the balloon workqueue is not destroyed, as shutdown
does not free the device and cancel_work_sync() together with stop_update
already prevent any further work from being queued.