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Fencer Vulns
high 7.8

CVE-2021-47635 json

ubifs: Fix to add refcount once page is set private

published 2025-02-26 20 mo ago modified 2026-08-05 3 mo ago also EUVD-2021-34669

cvss
7.8
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.3%
EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 17%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

ubifs: Fix to add refcount once page is set private

MM defined the rule [1] very clearly that once page was set with PG_private flag, we should increment the refcount in that page, also main flows like pageout(), migrate_page() will assume there is one additional page reference count if page_has_private() returns true. Otherwise, we may get a BUG in page migration:

page:0000000080d05b9d refcount:-1 mapcount:0 mapping:000000005f4d82a8 index:0xe2 pfn:0x14c12 aops:ubifs_file_address_operations [ubifs] ino:8f1 dentry name:"f30e" flags: 0x1fffff80002405(locked|uptodate|owner_priv_1|private|node=0| zone=1|lastcpupid=0x1fffff) page dumped because: VM_BUG_ON_PAGE(page_count(page) != 0) ------------[ cut here ]------------ kernel BUG at include/linux/page_ref.h:184! invalid opcode: 0000 [#1] SMP CPU: 3 PID: 38 Comm: kcompactd0 Not tainted 5.15.0-rc5 RIP: 0010:migrate_page_move_mapping+0xac3/0xe70 Call Trace: ubifs_migrate_page+0x22/0xc0 [ubifs] move_to_new_page+0xb4/0x600 migrate_pages+0x1523/0x1cc0 compact_zone+0x8c5/0x14b0 kcompactd+0x2bc/0x560 kthread+0x18c/0x1e0 ret_from_fork+0x1f/0x30

Before the time, we should make clean a concept, what does refcount means in page gotten from grab_cache_page_write_begin(). There are 2 situations: Situation 1: refcount is 3, page is created by __page_cache_alloc. TYPE_A - the write process is using this page TYPE_B - page is assigned to one certain mapping by calling __add_to_page_cache_locked() TYPE_C - page is added into pagevec list corresponding current cpu by calling lru_cache_add() Situation 2: refcount is 2, page is gotten from the mapping's tree TYPE_B - page has been assigned to one certain mapping TYPE_A - the write process is using this page (by calling page_cache_get_speculative()) Filesystem releases one refcount by calling put_page() in xxx_write_end(), the released refcount corresponds to TYPE_A (write task is using it). If there are any processes using a page, page migration process will skip the page by judging whether expected_page_refs() equals to page refcount.

The BUG is caused by following process: PA(cpu 0) kcompactd(cpu 1) compact_zone ubifs_write_begin page_a = grab_cache_page_write_begin add_to_page_cache_lru lru_cache_add pagevec_add // put page into cpu 0's pagevec (refcnf = 3, for page creation process) ubifs_write_end SetPagePrivate(page_a) // doesn't increase page count ! unlock_page(page_a) put_page(page_a) // refcnt = 2 [...]

PB(cpu 0) filemap_read filemap_get_pages add_to_page_cache_lru lru_cache_add __pagevec_lru_add // traverse all pages in cpu 0's pagevec __pagevec_lru_add_fn SetPageLRU(page_a) isolate_migratepages isolate_migratepages_block get_page_unless_zero(page_a) // refcnt = 3 list_add(page_a, from_list) migrate_pages(from_list) __unmap_and_move move_to_new_page ubifs_migrate_page(page_a) migrate_page_move_mapping expected_page_refs get 3 (migration[1] + mapping[1] + private[1]) release_pages put_page_testzero(page_a) // refcnt = 3 page_ref_freeze // refcnt = 0 page_ref_dec_and_test(0 - 1 = -1) page_ref_unfreeze VM_BUG_ON_PAGE(-1 != 0, page)

UBIFS doesn't increase the page refcount after setting private flag, which leads to page migration task believes the page is not used by any other processes, so the page is migrated. This causes concurrent accessing on page refcount between put_page() called by other process(eg. read process calls lru_cache_add) and page_ref_unfreeze() called by mi ---truncated---

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 5.10.110, 5.15.33, 5.16.19, 5.17.2, 5.18
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 5.17.3-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2021-47635

  • linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-37.39
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1011.14
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1008.12
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1008.10
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1007.8
  • linux-kvm Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1010.11
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1010.12
  • linux-raspi Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1011.13

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2021-47635

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • kernel-64kb SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP5-ESPOS 5.14.21-150500.55.100.1
  • kernel-syms SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP5-LTSS +1 more 5.14.21-150500.55.100.1
  • kernel-source SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.5 +2 more 5.14.21-150500.55.100.1
  • kernel-default SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.5 +3 more 5.14.21-150500.55.100.1
  • kernel-obs-build SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP5-LTSS +1 more 5.14.21-150500.55.100.1
  • kernel-default-base SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.5 +2 more 5.14.21-150500.55.100.1.150500.6.47.1
  • kernel-rt SLE Micro 5.4, SLE Micro 5.3 5.14.21-150400.15.115.1
  • kernel-source-rt SLE Micro 5.4, SLE Micro 5.3 5.14.21-150400.15.115.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2025:1241-1SUSE-SU-2025:1183-1SUSE-SU-2025:1176-1SUSE-SU-2025:1027-1

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-2021-47635 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: ubifs: Fix to add refcount once page is set private

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel
    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

Exploit prediction

0.26% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 17% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 7.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
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

Technology feeds

References

Sources

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