CVE-2026-23195: cgroup/dmem: avoid pool UAF

Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-02-14 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-416

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: cgroup/dmem: avoid pool UAF An UAF issue was observed: BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in page_counter_uncharge+0x65/0x150 Write of size 8 at addr ffff888106715440 by task insmod/527 CPU: 4 UID: 0 PID: 527 Comm: insmod 6.19.0-rc7-next-20260129+ #11 Tainted: [O]=OOT_MODULE Call Trace: <TASK> dump_stack_lvl+0x82/0xd0 kasan_report+0xca/0x100 kasan_check_range+0x39/0x1c0 page_counter_uncharge+0x65/0x150 dmem_cgroup_uncharge+0x1f/0x260 Allocated by task 527: Freed by task 0: The buggy address belongs to the object at ffff888106715400 which belongs to the cache kmalloc-512 of size 512 The buggy address is located 64 bytes inside of freed 512-byte region [ffff888106715400, ffff888106715600) The buggy address belongs to the physical page: Memory state around the buggy address: ffff888106715300: fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc ffff888106715380: fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc >ffff888106715400: fa fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb ^ ffff888106715480: fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb ffff888106715500: fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb The issue occurs because a pool can still be held by a caller after its associated memory region is unregistered. The current implementation frees the pool even if users still hold references to it (e.g., before uncharge operations complete). This patch adds a reference counter to each pool, ensuring that a pool is only freed when its reference count drops to zero.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 6.14 before 6.18.10; 6.19-rc1, 6.19-rc2, 6.19-rc3, 6.19-rc4, 6.19-rc5, 6.19-rc6 (+2) — fixed in 6.18.10

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.18.10. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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