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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2023-52490 json

mm: migrate: fix getting incorrect page mapping during page migration

published 2024-02-29 2 y ago modified 2026-10-30 10 d ago also EUVD-2023-57115

cvss
5.5
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 20%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

mm: migrate: fix getting incorrect page mapping during page migration

When running stress-ng testing, we found below kernel crash after a few hours:

Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 0000000000000000 pc : dentry_name+0xd8/0x224 lr : pointer+0x22c/0x370 sp : ffff800025f134c0 ...... Call trace: dentry_name+0xd8/0x224 pointer+0x22c/0x370 vsnprintf+0x1ec/0x730 vscnprintf+0x2c/0x60 vprintk_store+0x70/0x234 vprintk_emit+0xe0/0x24c vprintk_default+0x3c/0x44 vprintk_func+0x84/0x2d0 printk+0x64/0x88 __dump_page+0x52c/0x530 dump_page+0x14/0x20 set_migratetype_isolate+0x110/0x224 start_isolate_page_range+0xc4/0x20c offline_pages+0x124/0x474 memory_block_offline+0x44/0xf4 memory_subsys_offline+0x3c/0x70 device_offline+0xf0/0x120 ......

After analyzing the vmcore, I found this issue is caused by page migration. The scenario is that, one thread is doing page migration, and we will use the target page's ->mapping field to save 'anon_vma' pointer between page unmap and page move, and now the target page is locked and refcount is 1.

Currently, there is another stress-ng thread performing memory hotplug, attempting to offline the target page that is being migrated. It discovers that the refcount of this target page is 1, preventing the offline operation, thus proceeding to dump the page. However, page_mapping() of the target page may return an incorrect file mapping to crash the system in dump_mapping(), since the target page->mapping only saves 'anon_vma' pointer without setting PAGE_MAPPING_ANON flag.

There are seveval ways to fix this issue: (1) Setting the PAGE_MAPPING_ANON flag for target page's ->mapping when saving 'anon_vma', but this can confuse PageAnon() for PFN walkers, since the target page has not built mappings yet. (2) Getting the page lock to call page_mapping() in __dump_page() to avoid crashing the system, however, there are still some PFN walkers that call page_mapping() without holding the page lock, such as compaction. (3) Using target page->private field to save the 'anon_vma' pointer and 2 bits page state, just as page->mapping records an anonymous page, which can remove the page_mapping() impact for PFN walkers and also seems a simple way.

So I choose option 3 to fix this issue, and this can also fix other potential issues for PFN walkers, such as compaction.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.1.191, 6.6.15, 6.7.3, 6.8
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13 6.6.15-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2023-52490

  • linux-gcp-6.5 Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 6.5.0-1022.24~22.04.1
  • linux-hwe-6.5 Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 6.5.0-41.41~22.04.2
  • linux-oem-6.5 Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 6.5.0-1024.25
  • linux-azure-6.5 Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 6.5.0-1022.23~22.04.1
  • linux-riscv-6.5 Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 6.5.0-40.40.1~22.04.1
  • linux-nvidia-6.5 Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 6.5.0-1021.22
  • linux-oracle-6.5 Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 6.5.0-1024.24~22.04.1
  • linux-starfive-6.5 Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 6.5.0-1015.16~22.04.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2023-52490

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 RHEL 9 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5
  • rv RHEL 9 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5
  • perf RHEL 9 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5
  • rtla RHEL 9 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5
  • bpftool RHEL 9 7.4.0-503.26.1.el9_5
  • libperf RHEL 9 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5
  • kernel-rt RHEL 9 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5
  • kernel-64k RHEL 9 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5

red hat advisories RHSA-2025:1659

  • kernel AlmaLinux 9 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5
  • rv AlmaLinux 9 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5
  • perf AlmaLinux 9 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5
  • rtla AlmaLinux 9 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5
  • bpftool AlmaLinux 9 7.4.0-503.26.1.el9_5
  • libperf AlmaLinux 9 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5
  • kernel-rt AlmaLinux 9 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5
  • kernel-64k AlmaLinux 9 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5

almalinux advisories ALSA-2025:1659

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-2023-52490 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: mm: migrate: fix getting incorrect page mapping during page migration

  • 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: workaround, no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 kernel-rt, kernel-rt-kvm, kernel-rt-core, kernel-rt-modules, kernel-rt-debug-kvm, kernel-rt-debug-core, +12 more
    affected: workaround, no fix available
  • Red Hat CodeReady Linux Builder (v. 9) libperf 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5, kernel-debuginfo-common-s390x 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5, kernel-debuginfo-common-x86_64 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5, kernel-debuginfo-common-aarch64 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5, kernel-debuginfo-common-ppc64le 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5 Red Hat Enterprise Linux AppStream (v. 9) rv 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5, perf 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5, rtla 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5, kernel-devel-matched 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5, kernel-64k-devel-matched 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5, kernel-debug-devel-matched 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5, +6 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux BaseOS (v. 9) bpftool 7.4.0-503.26.1.el9_5, kernel 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5, kernel-64k 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5, kernel-core 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5, kernel-tools 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5, python3-perf 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5, +29 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux Real Time (v. 9) kernel-rt 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5, kernel-rt-core 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5, kernel-rt-modules 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5, kernel-rt-debug-core 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5, kernel-rt-modules-core 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5, kernel-rt-debug-modules 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5, +4 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux Real Time for NFV (v. 9) kernel-rt 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5, kernel-rt-kvm 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5, kernel-rt-core 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5, kernel-rt-modules 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5, kernel-rt-debug-kvm 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5, kernel-rt-debug-core 5.14.0-503.26.1.el9_5, +6 more
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2025:1659
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 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
18 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.28% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 20% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CISA ADP 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/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
CNA 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
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.