In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: fs/proc: do_task_stat: use sig->stats_lock to gather the threads/children stats lock_task_sighand() can trigger a hard lockup. If NR_CPUS threads call do_task_stat() at the same time and the process has NR_THREADS, it will spin with irqs disabled O(NR_CPUS * NR_THREADS) time. Change do_task_stat() to use sig->stats_lock to gather the statistics outside of ->siglock protected section, in the likely case this code will run lockless.