CVE-2024-35872: mm/secretmem: fix GUP-fast succeeding on secretmem folios

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2024-05-19 · updated 2026-08-04

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/secretmem: fix GUP-fast succeeding on secretmem folios folio_is_secretmem() currently relies on secretmem folios being LRU folios, to save some cycles. However, folios might reside in a folio batch without the LRU flag set, or temporarily have their LRU flag cleared. Consequently, the LRU flag is unreliable for this purpose. In particular, this is the case when secretmem_fault() allocates a fresh page and calls filemap_add_folio()->folio_add_lru(). The folio might be added to the per-cpu folio batch and won't get the LRU flag set until the batch was drained using e.g., lru_add_drain(). Consequently, folio_is_secretmem() might not detect secretmem folios and GUP-fast can succeed in grabbing a secretmem folio, crashing the kernel when we would later try reading/writing to the folio, because the folio has been unmapped from the directmap. Fix it by removing that unreliable check.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 5.14 before 5.15.154; from 5.16 before 6.1.85; from 6.2 before 6.6.26; from 6.7 before 6.8.5; 6.9-rc1, 6.9-rc2 — fixed in 5.15.154, 6.1.85, 6.6.26, 6.8.5

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.15.154, 6.1.85, 6.6.26, 6.8.5. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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