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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2021-47462 json

mm/mempolicy: do not allow illegal MPOL_F_NUMA_BALANCING | MPOL_LOCAL in mbind()

published 2024-05-22 2 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2021-34467

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 7%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

mm/mempolicy: do not allow illegal MPOL_F_NUMA_BALANCING | MPOL_LOCAL in mbind()

syzbot reported access to unitialized memory in mbind() [1]

Issue came with commit bda420b98505 ("numa balancing: migrate on fault among multiple bound nodes")

This commit added a new bit in MPOL_MODE_FLAGS, but only checked valid combination (MPOL_F_NUMA_BALANCING can only be used with MPOL_BIND) in do_set_mempolicy()

This patch moves the check in sanitize_mpol_flags() so that it is also used by mbind()

[1] BUG: KMSAN: uninit-value in __mpol_equal+0x567/0x590 mm/mempolicy.c:2260 __mpol_equal+0x567/0x590 mm/mempolicy.c:2260 mpol_equal include/linux/mempolicy.h:105 [inline] vma_merge+0x4a1/0x1e60 mm/mmap.c:1190 mbind_range+0xcc8/0x1e80 mm/mempolicy.c:811 do_mbind+0xf42/0x15f0 mm/mempolicy.c:1333 kernel_mbind mm/mempolicy.c:1483 [inline] __do_sys_mbind mm/mempolicy.c:1490 [inline] __se_sys_mbind+0x437/0xb80 mm/mempolicy.c:1486 __x64_sys_mbind+0x19d/0x200 mm/mempolicy.c:1486 do_syscall_x64 arch/x86/entry/common.c:51 [inline] do_syscall_64+0x54/0xd0 arch/x86/entry/common.c:82 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x44/0xae

Uninit was created at: slab_alloc_node mm/slub.c:3221 [inline] slab_alloc mm/slub.c:3230 [inline] kmem_cache_alloc+0x751/0xff0 mm/slub.c:3235 mpol_new mm/mempolicy.c:293 [inline] do_mbind+0x912/0x15f0 mm/mempolicy.c:1289 kernel_mbind mm/mempolicy.c:1483 [inline] __do_sys_mbind mm/mempolicy.c:1490 [inline] __se_sys_mbind+0x437/0xb80 mm/mempolicy.c:1486 __x64_sys_mbind+0x19d/0x200 mm/mempolicy.c:1486 do_syscall_x64 arch/x86/entry/common.c:51 [inline] do_syscall_64+0x54/0xd0 arch/x86/entry/common.c:82 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x44/0xae ===================================================== Kernel panic - not syncing: panic_on_kmsan set ... CPU: 0 PID: 15049 Comm: syz-executor.0 Tainted: G B 5.15.0-rc2-syzkaller #0 Hardware name: Google Google Compute Engine/Google Compute Engine, BIOS Google 01/01/2011 Call Trace: __dump_stack lib/dump_stack.c:88 [inline] dump_stack_lvl+0x1ff/0x28e lib/dump_stack.c:106 dump_stack+0x25/0x28 lib/dump_stack.c:113 panic+0x44f/0xdeb kernel/panic.c:232 kmsan_report+0x2ee/0x300 mm/kmsan/report.c:186 __msan_warning+0xd7/0x150 mm/kmsan/instrumentation.c:208 __mpol_equal+0x567/0x590 mm/mempolicy.c:2260 mpol_equal include/linux/mempolicy.h:105 [inline] vma_merge+0x4a1/0x1e60 mm/mmap.c:1190 mbind_range+0xcc8/0x1e80 mm/mempolicy.c:811 do_mbind+0xf42/0x15f0 mm/mempolicy.c:1333 kernel_mbind mm/mempolicy.c:1483 [inline] __do_sys_mbind mm/mempolicy.c:1490 [inline] __se_sys_mbind+0x437/0xb80 mm/mempolicy.c:1486 __x64_sys_mbind+0x19d/0x200 mm/mempolicy.c:1486 do_syscall_x64 arch/x86/entry/common.c:51 [inline] do_syscall_64+0x54/0xd0 arch/x86/entry/common.c:82 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x44/0xae

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 5.14.15, 5.15
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 5.14.16-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2021-47462

  • dtb-aarch64 openSUSE Leap 15.5 5.14.21-150500.55.68.1
  • kernel-64kb SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP5, openSUSE Leap 15.5 5.14.21-150500.55.68.1
  • kernel-syms SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP5, openSUSE Leap 15.5 5.14.21-150500.55.68.1
  • kernel-obs-qa openSUSE Leap 15.5 5.14.21-150500.55.68.1
  • kernel-source SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP5, SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP5, openSUSE Leap 15.5 5.14.21-150500.55.68.1
  • kernel-default SLE Workstation Extension 15 SP5, SLE Module for Legacy 15 SP5, SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP5 +4 more 5.14.21-150500.55.68.1
  • kernel-kvmsmall openSUSE Leap 15.5 5.14.21-150500.55.68.1
  • kernel-zfcpdump SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP5, openSUSE Leap 15.5 5.14.21-150500.55.68.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2024:2190-1SUSE-SU-2024:2189-1SUSE-SU-2024:2019-1SUSE-SU-2024:2011-1SUSE-SU-2024:2008-1

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2021-47462 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: mm/mempolicy: do not allow illegal MPOL_F_NUMA_BALANCING | MPOL_LOCAL in mbind()

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more
    affected: no fix available
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
2 y ago

Exploit prediction

0.18% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 7% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-908 Use of Uninitialized Resource
Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.