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

hwmon: Handle failure to register sensor with thermal zone correctly

If an attempt is made to a sensor with a thermal zone and it fails,
the call to devm_thermal_zone_of_sensor_register() may return -ENODEV.
This may result in crashes similar to the following.

Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 00000000000003cd
...
Internal error: Oops: 96000021 [#1] PREEMPT SMP
...
pstate: 60400009 (nZCv daif +PAN -UAO -TCO -DIT -SSBS BTYPE=--)
pc : mutex_lock+0x18/0x60
lr : thermal_zone_device_update+0x40/0x2e0
sp : ffff800014c4fc60
x29: ffff800014c4fc60 x28: ffff365ee3f6e000 x27: ffffdde218426790
x26: ffff365ee3f6e000 x25: 0000000000000000 x24: ffff365ee3f6e000
x23: ffffdde218426870 x22: ffff365ee3f6e000 x21: 00000000000003cd
x20: ffff365ee8bf3308 x19: ffffffffffffffed x18: 0000000000000000
x17: ffffdde21842689c x16: ffffdde1cb7a0b7c x15: 0000000000000040
x14: ffffdde21a4889a0 x13: 0000000000000228 x12: 0000000000000000
x11: 0000000000000000 x10: 0000000000000000 x9 : 0000000000000000
x8 : 0000000001120000 x7 : 0000000000000001 x6 : 0000000000000000
x5 : 0068000878e20f07 x4 : 0000000000000000 x3 : 00000000000003cd
x2 : ffff365ee3f6e000 x1 : 0000000000000000 x0 : 00000000000003cd
Call trace:
mutex_lock+0x18/0x60
hwmon_notify_event+0xfc/0x110
0xffffdde1cb7a0a90
0xffffdde1cb7a0b7c
irq_thread_fn+0x2c/0xa0
irq_thread+0x134/0x240
kthread+0x178/0x190
ret_from_fork+0x10/0x20
Code: d503201f d503201f d2800001 aa0103e4 (c8e47c02)

Jon Hunter reports that the exact call sequence is:

hwmon_notify_event()
--> hwmon_thermal_notify()
--> thermal_zone_device_update()
--> update_temperature()
--> mutex_lock()

The hwmon core needs to handle all errors returned from calls
to devm_thermal_zone_of_sensor_register(). If the call fails
with -ENODEV, report that the sensor was not attached to a
thermal zone but continue to register the hwmon device.