CVE-2026-23100

MEDIUM

Linux Kernel - Incorrect PMD Table Sharing Detection in hugetlb_pmd_shared()

Title source: llm
STIX 2.1

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/hugetlb: fix hugetlb_pmd_shared() Patch series "mm/hugetlb: fixes for PMD table sharing (incl. using mmu_gather)", v3. One functional fix, one performance regression fix, and two related comment fixes. I cleaned up my prototype I recently shared [1] for the performance fix, deferring most of the cleanups I had in the prototype to a later point. While doing that I identified the other things. The goal of this patch set is to be backported to stable trees "fairly" easily. At least patch #1 and #4. Patch #1 fixes hugetlb_pmd_shared() not detecting any sharing Patch #2 + #3 are simple comment fixes that patch #4 interacts with. Patch #4 is a fix for the reported performance regression due to excessive IPI broadcasts during fork()+exit(). The last patch is all about TLB flushes, IPIs and mmu_gather. Read: complicated There are plenty of cleanups in the future to be had + one reasonable optimization on x86. But that's all out of scope for this series. Runtime tested, with a focus on fixing the performance regression using the original reproducer [2] on x86. This patch (of 4): We switched from (wrongly) using the page count to an independent shared count. Now, shared page tables have a refcount of 1 (excluding speculative references) and instead use ptdesc->pt_share_count to identify sharing. We didn't convert hugetlb_pmd_shared(), so right now, we would never detect a shared PMD table as such, because sharing/unsharing no longer touches the refcount of a PMD table. Page migration, like mbind() or migrate_pages() would allow for migrating folios mapped into such shared PMD tables, even though the folios are not exclusive. In smaps we would account them as "private" although they are "shared", and we would be wrongly setting the PM_MMAP_EXCLUSIVE in the pagemap interface. Fix it by properly using ptdesc_pmd_is_shared() in hugetlb_pmd_shared().

Scores

CVSS v3 5.5
EPSS 0.0003
EPSS Percentile 7.5%
Attack Vector LOCAL
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Details

Status published
Products (30)
linux/Kernel < 6.6.127linux
linux/Kernel 6.13.0 - 6.18.8linux
linux/Kernel 6.7.0 - 6.12.74linux
Linux/Linux < 6.13
Linux/Linux 02333ac1c35370517a19a4a131332a9690c6a5c7
Linux/Linux 02333ac1c35370517a19a4a131332a9690c6a5c7 - 5b2aec77f92265a9028c5f632bdd9af5b57ec3a3
Linux/Linux 2e31443a0d18ae43b9d29e02bf0563f07772193d - 3a18b452dd5f7f1652c2e92f8ae769aa17a66c9e
Linux/Linux 5.10.239 - 5.10.253
Linux/Linux 5.10.253 - 5.10.*
Linux/Linux 5.15.186 - 5.15.203
... and 20 more
Published Feb 04, 2026
Tracked Since Feb 18, 2026