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CVE-2024-46787

medium

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: userfaultfd: fix checks for huge PMDs Patch series "userfaultfd: fix races around pmd_tra…

Vendor / product: Linux — linux kernel

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: userfaultfd: fix checks for huge PMDs Patch series "userfaultfd: fix races around pmd_trans_huge() check", v2. The pmd_trans_huge() code in mfill_atomic() is wrong in three different ways depending on kernel version: 1. The pmd_trans_huge() check is racy and can lead to a BUG_ON() (if you hit the right two race windows) - I've tested this in a kernel build with some extra mdelay() calls. See the commit message for a description of the race scenario. On older kernels (before 6.5), I think the same bug can even theoretically lead to accessing transhuge page contents as a page table if you hit the right 5 narrow race windows (I haven't tested this case). 2. As pointed out by Qi Zheng, pmd_trans_huge() is not sufficient for detecting PMDs that don't point to page tables. On older kernels (before 6.5), you'd just have to win a single fairly wide race to hit this. I've tested this on 6.1 stable by racing migration (with a mdelay() patched into try_to_migrate()) against UFFDIO_ZEROPAGE - on my x86 VM, that causes a kernel oops in ptlock_ptr(). 3. On newer kernels (>=6.5), for shmem mappings, khugepaged is allowed to yank page tables out from under us (though I haven't tested that), so I think the BUG_ON() checks in mfill_atomic() are just wrong. I decided to write two separate fixes for these (one fix for bugs 1+2, one fix for bug 3), so that the first fix can be backported to kernels affected by bugs 1+2. This patch (of 2): This fixes two issues. I discovered that the following race can occur: mfill_atomic other thread ============ ============ pmdp_get_lockless() [reads none pmd] __pte_alloc [no-op] BUG_ON(pmd_none(*dst_pmd)) I have experimentally verified this in a kernel with extra mdelay() calls; the BUG_ON(pmd_none(*dst_pmd)) triggers. On kernels newer than commit 0d940a9b270b ("mm/pgtable: allow pte_offset_map[_lock]() to fail"), this can't lead to anything worse than a BUG_ON(), since the page table access helpers are actually designed to deal with page tables concurrently disappearing; but on older kernels (

CVSS
4.7
4.7 (CVSS v3.1)
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Severity source: NVD CVSS v3.1 (nvd@nist.gov)
Timeline (UTC)
Published: 2024-09-18 08:15
Modified: 2026-10-30 13:17
NVD status: Modified
Last synced 3 days ago
Verified against the source API 2026-10-30 13:38 UTC
Exploitation
Not listed in CISA KEV (as of last catalog sync)
Absence from KEV does not mean a CVE is not exploited. Exploitation status: unknown (no authoritative evidence in our sources).

Affected products

linux / linux_kernel ≥4.3 <6.6.51, ≥6.7 <6.10.10, 6.11

Weakness classification (CWE)

NVD-CWE-noinfo

Source: NVD / CISA. “NVD-CWE-Other” and “NVD-CWE-noinfo” mean NVD could not assign a specific weakness.

Mitigation & advisories

Patch / mitigation: https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3c6b4bcf37845c9359aed926324bed66bdd2448d
Patch / mitigation: https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/71c186efc1b2cf1aeabfeff3b9bd5ac4c5ac14d8
Patch / mitigation: https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/98cc18b1b71e23fe81a5194ed432b20c2d81a01a

References

Data sources

NVD CVE API 2.0 — fetched 2026-10-30 13:38 UTC · record ↗

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