In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
USB: core: Fix deadlock in port "disable" sysfs attribute
The show and store callback routines for the "disable" sysfs attribute file in port.c acquire the device lock for the port's parent hub device. This can cause problems if another process has locked the hub to remove it or change its configuration:
Removing the hub or changing its configuration requires the
hub interface to be removed, which requires the port device
to be removed, and device_del() waits until all outstanding
sysfs attribute callbacks for the ports have returned. The
lock can't be released until then.
But the disable_show() or disable_store() routine can't return
until after it has acquired the lock.
The resulting deadlock can be avoided by calling sysfsbreakactiveprotection(). This will cause the sysfs core not to wait for the attribute's callback routine to return, allowing the removal to proceed. The disadvantage is that after making this call, there is no guarantee that the hub structure won't be deallocated at any moment. To prevent this, we have to acquire a reference to it first by calling hubget().