In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
smb: client: fix races in cifsd thread creation
The cifsd demultiplex thread can run and access tcp_ses before the parent
thread has finished populating tcp_ses, which the worker thread accesses
locklessly.
Also, the kthread_run macro may start the thread before returning the
thread pointer. Because the pointer is part of the structure that the
thread can access, if the kernel is preempted after the thread is spawned,
but before the thread pointer is populated and the thread attempts to exit,
it will sleep, waiting for a SIGKILL signal.
Fix this by moving creation of the thread to after all of tcp_ses’es
fields are populated, and spawning the thread last, using a split
kthread_create/wake_up_process logic.
