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

drivers: staging: rtl8192eu: Fix deadlock in rtw_joinbss_event_prehandle

There is a deadlock in rtw_joinbss_event_prehandle(), which is shown below:

(Thread 1) | (Thread 2)
| _set_timer()
rtw_joinbss_event_prehandle()| mod_timer()
spin_lock_bh() //(1) | (wait a time)
... | rtw_join_timeout_handler()
| _rtw_join_timeout_handler()
del_timer_sync() | spin_lock_bh() //(2)
(wait timer to stop) | ...

We hold pmlmepriv->lock in position (1) of thread 1 and
use del_timer_sync() to wait timer to stop, but timer handler
also need pmlmepriv->lock in position (2) of thread 2.
As a result, rtw_joinbss_event_prehandle() will block forever.

This patch extracts del_timer_sync() from the protection of
spin_lock_bh(), which could let timer handler to obtain
the needed lock. What`s more, we change spin_lock_bh() to
spin_lock_irq() in _rtw_join_timeout_handler() in order to
prevent deadlock.

References

• https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-49303
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0fcddf9c7c10202946d5b19409efbdff744fba88
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/25cf414b0610fea29d8e045f315648d9007c9a46