kthread: consolidate kthread exit paths to prevent use-after-free

Guillaume reported crashes via corrupted RCU callback function pointers
during KUnit testing. The crash was traced back to the pidfs rhashtable
conversion which replaced the 24-byte rb_node with an 8-byte rhash_head
in struct pid, shrinking it from 160 to 144 bytes.

struct kthread (without CONFIG_BLK_CGROUP) is also 144 bytes. With
CONFIG_SLAB_MERGE_DEFAULT and SLAB_HWCACHE_ALIGN both round up to
192 bytes and share the same slab cache. struct pid.rcu.func and
struct kthread.affinity_node both sit at offset 0x78.

When a kthread exits via make_task_dead() it bypasses kthread_exit() and
misses the affinity_node cleanup. free_kthread_struct() frees the memory
while the node is still linked into the global kthread_affinity_list. A
subsequent list_del() by another kthread writes through dangling list
pointers into the freed and reused memory, corrupting the pid's
rcu.func pointer.

Instead of patching free_kthread_struct() to handle the missed cleanup,
consolidate all kthread exit paths. Turn kthread_exit() into a macro
that calls do_exit() and add kthread_do_exit() which is called from
do_exit() for any task with PF_KTHREAD set. This guarantees that
kthread-specific cleanup always happens regardless of the exit path -
make_task_dead(), direct do_exit(), or kthread_exit().

Replace __to_kthread() with a new tsk_is_kthread() accessor in the
public header. Export do_exit() since module code using the
kthread_exit() macro now needs it directly.

Reported-by: Guillaume Tucker <gtucker@gtucker.io>
Tested-by: Guillaume Tucker <gtucker@gtucker.io>
Tested-by: Mark Brown <broonie@kernel.org>
Tested-by: David Gow <davidgow@google.com>
Cc: <stable@vger.kernel.org>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20260224-mittlerweile-besessen-2738831ae7f6@brauner
Co-developed-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Fixes: 4d13f4304fa4 ("kthread: Implement preferred affinity")
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org>

1 files changed, 20 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/include/linux/kthread.h b/include/linux/kthread.h
index c92c1149ee6e..a01a474719a7 100644
--- a/include/linux/kthread.h
+++ b/include/linux/kthread.h
@@ -7,6 +7,24 @@
 
 struct mm_struct;
 
+/* opaque kthread data */
+struct kthread;
+
+/*
+ * When "(p->flags & PF_KTHREAD)" is set the task is a kthread and will
+ * always remain a kthread.  For kthreads p->worker_private always
+ * points to a struct kthread.  For tasks that are not kthreads
+ * p->worker_private is used to point to other things.
+ *
+ * Return NULL for any task that is not a kthread.
+ */
+static inline struct kthread *tsk_is_kthread(struct task_struct *p)
+{
+	if (p->flags & PF_KTHREAD)
+		return p->worker_private;
+	return NULL;
+}
+
 __printf(4, 5)
 struct task_struct *kthread_create_on_node(int (*threadfn)(void *data),
 					   void *data,
@@ -98,9 +116,10 @@ void *kthread_probe_data(struct task_struct *k);
 int kthread_park(struct task_struct *k);
 void kthread_unpark(struct task_struct *k);
 void kthread_parkme(void);
-void kthread_exit(long result) __noreturn;
+#define kthread_exit(result) do_exit(result)
 void kthread_complete_and_exit(struct completion *, long) __noreturn;
 int kthreads_update_housekeeping(void);
+void kthread_do_exit(struct kthread *, long);
 
 int kthreadd(void *unused);
 extern struct task_struct *kthreadd_task;