Stephen Rothwell

The issue is related to CPU mitigations in the Linux kernel. A recent commit missed that "cpu mitigations" is completely generic, whereas SPECULATION MITIGATIONS is x86-specific. This led to unnecessary confusion. The mitigation has been re-enabled by default for non-X86 architectures. The change allows x86 to use a single configuration for managing mitigations not strictly related to speculative execution.

A vulnerability in the Linux kernel has been resolved, related to the hyper-v clocksource. The issue arises from the combination of EXPORT SYMBOL and init, which can lead to kernel panic when modules attempt to use symbols annotated init after the .init.text section is freed. The problem was previously undetected by modpost due to a decade-long bug, but after fixing modpost, the issue was identified in linux-next builds.

A vulnerability in the Linux kernel has been resolved, related to the `xfrm4 protocol init()` function, which was annotated with ` init` and exported using `EXPORT SYMBOL`. This combination is problematic because the `.init.text` section is freed after initialization, and modules cannot use symbols annotated with ` init`, potentially leading to a kernel panic. The issue was detected after a fix was applied to `modpost`, a tool that had been broken for a decade.

A vulnerability in the Linux kernel has been resolved, related to the `mdio bus init()` function being annotated with ` init` while also being exported as a symbol. This combination is problematic because the `.init.text` section is freed after initialization, and modules cannot use symbols annotated with ` init`, potentially leading to a kernel panic. The issue was previously undetected by `modpost` due to a decade-long bug but was recently identified after `modpost` was fixed.

A vulnerability in the Linux kernel has been identified, related to the `seg6 hmac init()` function, which is annotated with ` init` and exported using `EXPORT SYMBOL`. This combination is problematic because the `.init.text` section is freed after initialization, and modules cannot use symbols annotated with ` init`. Access to a freed symbol may result in a kernel panic. The issue was previously undetected by `modpost` due to a decade-long bug, but a recent fix to `modpost` revealed the problem.