CVE-2026-72213: mm/hugetlb: fix hugetlb cgroup rsvd charge/uncharge mismatch

Severity: high (CVSS 7.1 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: 2026-08-15 · updated 2026-10-30

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/hugetlb: fix hugetlb cgroup rsvd charge/uncharge mismatch In alloc_hugetlb_folio(), a single h_cg pointer is used for both the rsvd and non-rsvd hugetlb cgroup charges. When map_chg is set, hugetlb_cgroup_charge_cgroup_rsvd() stores the charged cgroup in h_cg, but the immediately following hugetlb_cgroup_charge_cgroup() overwrites h_cg with the non-rsvd cgroup pointer. As a result, hugetlb_cgroup_commit_charge_rsvd() stores the wrong (non-rsvd) cgroup pointer into the folio's rsvd slot. When the folio is later freed, free_huge_folio() unconditionally calls both hugetlb_cgroup_uncharge_folio() and hugetlb_cgroup_uncharge_folio_rsvd(). The rsvd uncharge reads back the wrong cgroup from the folio and decrements a counter that was never charged for that cgroup, causing a page_counter underflow: page_counter underflow: -512 nr_pages=512 WARNING: mm/page_counter.c:61 at page_counter_cancel Fix this by introducing a separate h_cg_rsvd pointer exclusively for the rsvd charge path, keeping the rsvd and non-rsvd charges fully independent through their charge, commit, and error uncharge paths.

Affected products

Linux: 5.7 — fixed in 7.2

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux 7.2. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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