CVE-2026-89961: powerpc/mm: fix wrong addr_pfn tracking in compound vmemmap population

Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 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: 2026-09-16 · updated 2026-10-19

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: powerpc/mm: fix wrong addr_pfn tracking in compound vmemmap population vmemmap_populate_compound_pages() uses addr_pfn to determine the PFN offset within a compound page and to decide whether the current vmemmap slot should be populated as a head page mapping or should reuse a tail page mapping. However, addr_pfn is advanced manually in parallel with addr. The loop itself progresses in vmemmap address space, so each PAGE_SIZE step in addr covers PAGE_SIZE / sizeof(struct page) struct page slots. Since addr_pfn is compared against nr_pages in data-PFN units, it should advance by the same number of PFNs. The existing manual increments do not match that and therefore do not reliably track the PFN corresponding to the current addr. As a result, pfn_offset can be computed from the wrong PFN and the code can make the head/tail decision for the wrong compound-page position. Fix this by deriving addr_pfn directly from the current vmemmap address instead of carrying it as loop state.

Affected products

Linux kernel: 6.6 — fixed in 7.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 7.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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