CVE-2026-31445: mm/damon/core: avoid use of half-online-committed context

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 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: 2026-04-22 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-476

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/damon/core: avoid use of half-online-committed context One major usage of damon_call() is online DAMON parameters update. It is done by calling damon_commit_ctx() inside the damon_call() callback function. damon_commit_ctx() can fail for two reasons: 1) invalid parameters and 2) internal memory allocation failures. In case of failures, the damon_ctx that attempted to be updated (commit destination) can be partially updated (or, corrupted from a perspective), and therefore shouldn't be used anymore. The function only ensures the damon_ctx object can safely deallocated using damon_destroy_ctx(). The API callers are, however, calling damon_commit_ctx() only after asserting the parameters are valid, to avoid damon_commit_ctx() fails due to invalid input parameters. But it can still theoretically fail if the internal memory allocation fails. In the case, DAMON may run with the partially updated damon_ctx. This can result in unexpected behaviors including even NULL pointer dereference in case of damos_commit_dests() failure [1]. Such allocation failure is arguably too small to fail, so the real world impact would be rare. But, given the bad consequence, this needs to be fixed. Avoid such partially-committed (maybe-corrupted) damon_ctx use by saving the damon_commit_ctx() failure on the damon_ctx object. For this, introduce damon_ctx->maybe_corrupted field. damon_commit_ctx() sets it when it is failed. kdamond_call() checks if the field is set after each damon_call_control->fn() is executed. If it is set, ignore remaining callback requests and return. All kdamond_call() callers including kdamond_fn() also check the maybe_corrupted field right after kdamond_call() invocations. If the field is set, break the kdamond_fn() main loop so that DAMON sill doesn't use the context that might be corrupted. [sj@kernel.org: let kdamond_call() with cancel regardless of maybe_corrupted]

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 6.15 before 6.18.21; from 6.19 before 6.19.11; 7.0-rc1, 7.0-rc2, 7.0-rc3, 7.0-rc4, 7.0-rc5 — fixed in 6.18.21, 6.19.11

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.18.21, 6.19.11. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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