Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2021-47454

medium Nessus Plugin ID 224298

Synopsis

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed with a vulnerability that the vendor indicates will not be patched.

Description

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed that are impacted by a vulnerability without a vendor supplied patch available.

- In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: powerpc/smp: do not decrement idle task preempt count in CPU offline With PREEMPT_COUNT=y, when a CPU is offlined and then onlined again, we get: BUG: scheduling while atomic: swapper/1/0/0x00000000 no locks held by swapper/1/0. CPU: 1 PID: 0 Comm: swapper/1 Not tainted 5.15.0-rc2+ #100 Call Trace: dump_stack_lvl+0xac/0x108
__schedule_bug+0xac/0xe0 __schedule+0xcf8/0x10d0 schedule_idle+0x3c/0x70 do_idle+0x2d8/0x4a0 cpu_startup_entry+0x38/0x40 start_secondary+0x2ec/0x3a0 start_secondary_prolog+0x10/0x14 This is because powerpc's arch_cpu_idle_dead() decrements the idle task's preempt count, for reasons explained in commit a7c2bb8279d2 (powerpc: Re-enable preemption before cpu_die()), specifically start_secondary() expects a preempt_count() of 0. However, since commit 2c669ef6979c (powerpc/preempt: Don't touch the idle task's preempt_count during hotplug) and commit f1a0a376ca0c (sched/core: Initialize the idle task with preemption disabled), that justification no longer holds. The idle task isn't supposed to re-enable preemption, so remove the vestigial preempt_enable() from the CPU offline path. Tested with pseries and powernv in qemu, and pseries on PowerVM. (CVE-2021-47454)

Note that Nessus relies on the presence of the package as reported by the vendor.

Solution

There is no known solution at this time.

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 224298

File Name: unpatched_CVE_2021_47454.nasl

Version: 1.1

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: Misc.

Published: 3/5/2025

Updated: 3/5/2025

Supported Sensors: Nessus Agent, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Low

Score: 3.6

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 4.6

Temporal Score: 3.4

Vector: CVSS2#AV:L/AC:L/Au:S/C:N/I:N/A:C

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2021-47454

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 4.1

Temporal Score: 3.6

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:U/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/cpu, global_settings/vendor_unpatched

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Vulnerability Publication Date: 7/21/2021

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2021-47454

Detections

Analytics