In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
mm/page_alloc: fix race condition in unaccepted memory handling
The page allocator tracks the number of zones that have unaccepted memory using static_branch_enc/dec() and uses that static branch in hot paths to determine if it needs to deal with unaccepted memory.
Borislav and Thomas pointed out that the tracking is racy: operations on static_branch are not serialized against adding/removing unaccepted pages to/from the zone.
Sanity checks inside static_branch machinery detects it:
WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 10 at kernel/jump_label.c:276 __static_key_slow_dec_cpuslocked+0x8e/0xa0
The comment around the WARN() explains the problem:
/*
* Warn about the '-1' case though; since that means a
* decrement is concurrent with a first (0->1) increment. IOW
* people are trying to disable something that wasn't yet fully
* enabled. This suggests an ordering problem on the user side.
*/
The effect of this static_branch optimization is only visible on microbenchmark.
Instead of adding more complexity around it, remove it altogether.