CVE-2024-43889: Linux Kernel

Medium severity, CVSS 5.5. EPSS: 0.2% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: padata: Fix possible divide-by-0 panic in padata_mt_helper() We are hit with a not easily reproducible divide-by-0 panic in padata.c at bootup time. [ 10.017908] Oops: divide error: 0000 1 PREEMPT SMP NOPTI [ 10.017908] CPU: 26 PID: 2627 Comm: kworker/u1666:1 Not tainted 6.10.0-15.el10.x86_64 #1 [ 10.017908] Hardware name: Lenovo ThinkSystem SR950 [7X12CTO1WW]/[7X12CTO1WW], BIOS [PSE140J-2.30] 07/20/2021 [ 10.017908] Workqueue: events_unbound padata_mt_helper [ 10.017908] RIP: 0010:padata_mt_helper+0x39/0xb0 : [ 10.017963] Call Trace: [ 10.017968] <TASK> [ 10.018004] ? padata_mt_helper+0x39/0xb0 [ 10.018084] process_one_work+0x174/0x330 [ 10.018093] worker_thread+0x266/0x3a0 [ 10.018111] kthread+0xcf/0x100 [ 10.018124] ret_from_fork+0x31/0x50 [ 10.018138] ret_from_fork_asm+0x1a/0x30 [ 10.018147] </TASK> Looking at the padata_mt_helper() function, the only way a divide-by-0 panic can happen is when ps->chunk_size is 0. The way that chunk_size is initialized in padata_do_multithreaded(), chunk_size can be 0 when the min_chunk in the passed-in padata_mt_job structure is 0. Fix this divide-by-0 panic by making sure that chunk_size will be at least 1 no matter what the input parameters are.

Affected products

• Linux Linux Kernel: from 5.8, before 5.10.224 (fixed in 5.10.224); from 5.11, before 5.15.165 (fixed in 5.15.165); from 5.16, before 6.1.105 (fixed in 6.1.105); from 6.2, before 6.6.46 (fixed in 6.6.46); from 6.7, before 6.10.5 (fixed in 6.10.5); version 6.11 only

Published 2024-08-26. Last modified 2026-06-17.