CVE-2025-21807
kernel: block: fix queue freeze vs limits lock order in sysfs store methods
Severity
LowRed Hat Product Security
CVSS 3.1
Review impact separately from score.
Published · February 27, 2025
Updated · June 30, 2026
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
block: fix queue freeze vs limits lock order in sysfs store methods
queue_attr_store() always freezes a device queue before calling the attribute store operation. For attributes that control queue limits, the store operation will also lock the queue limits with a call to queue_limits_start_update(). However, some drivers (e.g. SCSI sd) may need to issue commands to a device to obtain limit values from the hardware with the queue limits locked. This creates a potential ABBA deadlock situation if a user attempts to modify a limit (thus freezing the device queue) while the device driver starts a revalidation of the device queue limits.
Avoid such deadlock by not freezing the queue before calling the ->store_limit() method in struct queue_sysfs_entry and instead use the queue_limits_commit_update_frozen helper to freeze the queue after taking the limits lock.
This also removes taking the sysfs lock for the store_limit method as it doesn't protect anything here, but creates even more nesting. Hopefully it will go away from the actual sysfs methods entirely soon.
(commit log adapted from a similar patch from Damien Le Moal)
CVSS score applicability
The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.
Mitigation
No mitigation is specified in collected source.
CVSS / CWE
CVSS 3.1 · 4CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CWE-833 · Deadlock