In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: bpf: Fix mmap_lock deadlock on arena lock failure Reported by the Sashiko AI review. arena_vm_fault() returns VM_FAULT_RETRY when it can't take arena->spinlock, but i…

Overview

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

bpf: Fix mmap_lock deadlock on arena lock failure

Reported by the Sashiko AI review.

arena_vm_fault() returns VM_FAULT_RETRY when it can't take arena->spinlock, but it never took mmap_lock. The fault path assumes a VM_FAULT_RETRY handler already dropped mmap_lock and re-takes it on the retry, so mmap_lock gets taken twice and can deadlock:

do_user_addr_fault()
{
	fault = handle_mm_fault(...);   // calls arena_vm_fault()
	if (fault & VM_FAULT_RETRY)
		goto retry;   // re-locks mmap_lock
	mmap_read_unlock(mm);
}

Return VM_FAULT_SIGBUS instead, for two reasons:

1. We could keep VM_FAULT_RETRY, but then we'd have to drop the fault lock first and cap the retry ourselves, the way __folio_lock_or_retry() does.

2. A failed raw_res_spin_lock_irqsave() already means a possible deadlock was detected, so retrying just hits the same lock again.

So returning VM_FAULT_RETRY here is overkill.

Remediation

Refer to the linked advisories for vendor-supplied fixes and affected version ranges.