Unity Linux 20.1070e Security Update: kernel (UTSA-2025-986583)

medium Nessus Plugin ID 267985

Synopsis

The Unity Linux host is missing one or more security updates.

Description

The Unity Linux 20 host has a package installed that is affected by a vulnerability as referenced in the UTSA-2025-986583 advisory.

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

MIPS: smp: fill in sibling and core maps earlier

After enabling CONFIG_SCHED_CORE (landed during 5.14 cycle), 2-core 2-thread-per-core interAptiv (CPS-driven) started emitting the following:

[ 0.025698] CPU1 revision is: 0001a120 (MIPS interAptiv (multi)) [ 0.048183] ------------[ cut here ]------------ [ 0.048187] WARNING: CPU: 1 PID: 0 at kernel/sched/core.c:6025 sched_core_cpu_starting+0x198/0x240 [ 0.048220] Modules linked in:
[ 0.048233] CPU: 1 PID: 0 Comm: swapper/1 Not tainted 5.17.0-rc3+ #35 b7b319f24073fd9a3c2aa7ad15fb7993eec0b26f [ 0.048247] Stack : 817f0000 00000004 327804c8 810eb050 00000000 00000004 00000000 c314fdd1 [ 0.048278] 830cbd64 819c0000 81800000 817f0000 83070bf4 00000001 830cbd08 00000000 [ 0.048307] 00000000 00000000 815fcbc4 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 [ 0.048334] 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 817f0000 00000000 00000000 817f6f34 [ 0.048361] 817f0000 818a3c00 817f0000 00000004 00000000 00000000 4dc33260 0018c933 [ 0.048389] ...
[ 0.048396] Call Trace:
[ 0.048399] [<8105a7bc>] show_stack+0x3c/0x140 [ 0.048424] [<8131c2a0>] dump_stack_lvl+0x60/0x80 [ 0.048440] [<8108b5c0>] __warn+0xc0/0xf4 [ 0.048454] [<8108b658>] warn_slowpath_fmt+0x64/0x10c [ 0.048467] [<810bd418>] sched_core_cpu_starting+0x198/0x240 [ 0.048483] [<810c6514>] sched_cpu_starting+0x14/0x80 [ 0.048497] [<8108c0f8>] cpuhp_invoke_callback_range+0x78/0x140 [ 0.048510] [<8108d914>] notify_cpu_starting+0x94/0x140 [ 0.048523] [<8106593c>] start_secondary+0xbc/0x280 [ 0.048539] [ 0.048543] ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]--- [ 0.048636] Synchronize counters for CPU 1: done.

...for each but CPU 0/boot.
Basic debug printks right before the mentioned line say:

[ 0.048170] CPU: 1, smt_mask:

So smt_mask, which is sibling mask obviously, is empty when entering the function.
This is critical, as sched_core_cpu_starting() calculates core-scheduling parameters only once per CPU start, and it's crucial to have all the parameters filled in at that moment (at least it uses cpu_smt_mask() which in fact is `&cpu_sibling_map[cpu]` on MIPS).

A bit of debugging led me to that set_cpu_sibling_map() performing the actual map calculation, was being invocated after notify_cpu_start(), and exactly the latter function starts CPU HP callback round (sched_core_cpu_starting() is basically a CPU HP callback).
While the flow is same on ARM64 (maps after the notifier, although before calling set_cpu_online()), x86 started calculating sibling maps earlier than starting the CPU HP callbacks in Linux 4.14 (see [0] for the reference). Neither me nor my brief tests couldn't find any potential caveats in calculating the maps right after performing delay calibration, but the WARN splat is now gone.
The very same debug prints now yield exactly what I expected from them:

[ 0.048433] CPU: 1, smt_mask: 0-1

[0] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mips/linux.git/commit/?id=76ce7cfe35ef

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Unity Linux security advisory.

Note that Nessus has not tested for this issue but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

See Also

http://www.nessus.org/u?f26082d1

https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-48845

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 267985

File Name: unity_linux_UTSA-2025-986583.nasl

Version: 1.1

Type: local

Published: 10/7/2025

Updated: 10/7/2025

Supported Sensors: Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 4.4

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 4.6

Temporal Score: 3.4

Vector: CVSS2#AV:L/AC:L/Au:S/C:N/I:N/A:C

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2022-48845

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5.5

Temporal Score: 4.8

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:U/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/cpu, Host/UOS-Server/release, Host/UOS-Server/rpm-list

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 9/22/2025

Vulnerability Publication Date: 7/16/2024

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2022-48845