Linux Kernel up to 6.18.18/6.19.8 hmm_range_fault denial of service

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability was found in Linux Kernel up to 6.18.18/6.19.8 and classified as critical. Affected by this issue is the function hmm_range_fault. Such manipulation leads to denial of service. This vulnerability is listed as CVE-2026-43404. There is no available exploit. It is suggested to upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability, which was classified as critical, has been found in Linux Kernel up to 6.18.18/6.19.8. Affected by this issue is the function hmm_range_fault. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a denial of service vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-404. The product does not release or incorrectly releases a resource before it is made available for re-use. Impacted is availability. CVE summarizes:

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm: Fix a hmm_range_fault() livelock / starvation problem If hmm_range_fault() fails a folio_trylock() in do_swap_page, trying to acquire the lock of a device-private folio for migration, to ram, the function will spin until it succeeds grabbing the lock. However, if the process holding the lock is depending on a work item to be completed, which is scheduled on the same CPU as the spinning hmm_range_fault(), that work item might be starved and we end up in a livelock / starvation situation which is never resolved. This can happen, for example if the process holding the device-private folio lock is stuck in migrate_device_unmap()->lru_add_drain_all() sinc lru_add_drain_all() requires a short work-item to be run on all online cpus to complete. A prerequisite for this to happen is: a) Both zone device and system memory folios are considered in migrate_device_unmap(), so that there is a reason to call lru_add_drain_all() for a system memory folio while a folio lock is held on a zone device folio. b) The zone device folio has an initial mapcount > 1 which causes at least one migration PTE entry insertion to be deferred to try_to_migrate(), which can happen after the call to lru_add_drain_all(). c) No or voluntary only preemption. This all seems pretty unlikely to happen, but indeed is hit by the "xe_exec_system_allocator" igt test. Resolve this by waiting for the folio to be unlocked if the folio_trylock() fails in do_swap_page(). Rename migration_entry_wait_on_locked() to softleaf_entry_wait_unlock() and update its documentation to indicate the new use-case. Future code improvements might consider moving the lru_add_drain_all() call in migrate_device_unmap() to be called *after* all pages have migration entries inserted. That would eliminate also b) above. v2: - Instead of a cond_resched() in hmm_range_fault(), eliminate the problem by waiting for the folio to be unlocked in do_swap_page() (Alistair Popple, Andrew Morton) v3: - Add a stub migration_entry_wait_on_locked() for the !CONFIG_MIGRATION case. (Kernel Test Robot) v4: - Rename migrate_entry_wait_on_locked() to softleaf_entry_wait_on_locked() and update docs (Alistair Popple) v5: - Add a WARN_ON_ONCE() for the !CONFIG_MIGRATION version of softleaf_entry_wait_on_locked(). - Modify wording around function names in the commit message (Andrew Morton) (cherry picked from commit a69d1ab971a624c6f112cea61536569d579c3215)

The advisory is available at git.kernel.org. This vulnerability is handled as CVE-2026-43404 since 05/01/2026. Technical details are known, but there is no available exploit.

Upgrading to version 6.18.19 or 6.19.9 eliminates this vulnerability. Applying the patch 94b6d0ba4b640ba23bb6c708a59316e74e5ede63/7e6e2fc91d4b9b12ec6e137019532568ebcf2680/b570f37a2ce480be26c665345c5514686a8a0274 is able to eliminate this problem. The bugfix is ready for download at git.kernel.org. The best possible mitigation is suggested to be upgrading to the latest version.

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Productinfo

Type

• Operating System

Vendor

• Linux

Name

• Kernel

Version

• 6.18.0
• 6.18.1
• 6.18.2
• 6.18.3
• 6.18.4
• 6.18.5
• 6.18.6
• 6.18.7
• 6.18.8
• 6.18.9
• 6.18.10
• 6.18.11
• 6.18.12
• 6.18.13
• 6.18.14
• 6.18.15
• 6.18.16
• 6.18.17
• 6.18.18
• 6.19.0
• 6.19.1
• 6.19.2
• 6.19.3
• 6.19.4
• 6.19.5
• 6.19.6
• 6.19.7
• 6.19.8

License

• open-source

Website

• Vendor: https://www.kernel.org/

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Entryinfo

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