Medium CVSS 5.5

Overview

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

mm/hugetlb: fix memfd_pin_folios free_huge_pages leak

memfd_pin_folios followed by unpin_folios fails to restore free_huge_pages
if the pages were not already faulted in, because the folio refcount for
pages created by memfd_alloc_folio never goes to 0. memfd_pin_folios
needs another folio_put to undo the folio_try_get below:

memfd_alloc_folio()
alloc_hugetlb_folio_nodemask()
dequeue_hugetlb_folio_nodemask()
dequeue_hugetlb_folio_node_exact()
folio_ref_unfreeze(folio, 1); ; adds 1 refcount
folio_try_get() ; adds 1 refcount
hugetlb_add_to_page_cache() ; adds 512 refcount (on x86)

With the fix, after memfd_pin_folios + unpin_folios, the refcount for the
(unfaulted) page is 512, which is correct, as the refcount for a faulted
unpinned page is 513.

Risk analysis

This vulnerability is rated 🟡 MEDIUM.

  • CVSS: 5.5 (MEDIUM)
  • Detected tags: none (tag impact: LOW)

Recommended actions:

  • Prioritize remediation based on business criticality and exposure.
  • Limit exposure and increase monitoring until fixed.

Recommended tools

Tags