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Fencer Vulns
high 7.8

CVE-2024-42234 json

mm: fix crashes from deferred split racing folio migration

published 2024-08-07 2 y ago modified 2026-08-05 3 mo ago also EUVD-2024-39438

cvss
7.8
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 9%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

mm: fix crashes from deferred split racing folio migration

Even on 6.10-rc6, I've been seeing elusive "Bad page state"s (often on flags when freeing, yet the flags shown are not bad: PG_locked had been set and cleared??), and VM_BUG_ON_PAGE(page_ref_count(page) == 0)s from deferred_split_scan()'s folio_put(), and a variety of other BUG and WARN symptoms implying double free by deferred split and large folio migration.

6.7 commit 9bcef5973e31 ("mm: memcg: fix split queue list crash when large folio migration") was right to fix the memcg-dependent locking broken in 85ce2c517ade ("memcontrol: only transfer the memcg data for migration"), but missed a subtlety of deferred_split_scan(): it moves folios to its own local list to work on them without split_queue_lock, during which time folio->_deferred_list is not empty, but even the "right" lock does nothing to secure the folio and the list it is on.

Fortunately, deferred_split_scan() is careful to use folio_try_get(): so folio_migrate_mapping() can avoid the race by folio_undo_large_rmappable() while the old folio's reference count is temporarily frozen to 0 - adding such a freeze in the !mapping case too (originally, folio lock and unmapping and no swap cache left an anon folio unreachable, so no freezing was needed there: but the deferred split queue offers a way to reach it).

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.9.10, 6.10
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13 6.9.10-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2024-42234

  • linux Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-48.48
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1018.20
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1017.19
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1013.17
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1015.15
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1017.20
  • linux-gkeop Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1002.4
  • linux-raspi Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1014.16

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2024-42234

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

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-2024-42234 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: mm: fix crashes from deferred split racing folio 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 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
    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

0.19% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 9% 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

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.