Affected: Linux

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

drivers: staging: rtl8192u: Fix deadlock in ieee80211_beacons_stop()

There is a deadlock in ieee80211_beacons_stop(), which is shown below:

(Thread 1) | (Thread 2) | ieee80211_send_beacon() ieee80211_beacons_stop() | mod_timer() spin_lock_irqsave() //(1) | (wait a time) ... | ieee80211_send_beacon_cb() del_timer_sync() | spin_lock_irqsave() //(2) (wait timer to stop) | ...

We hold ieee->beacon_lock in position (1) of thread 1 and use del_timer_sync() to wait timer to stop, but timer handler also need ieee->beacon_lock in position (2) of thread 2. As a result, ieee80211_beacons_stop() will block forever.

This patch extracts del_timer_sync() from the protection of spin_lock_irqsave(), which could let timer handler to obtain the needed lock.