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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2025-39844 json

mm: move page table sync declarations to linux/pgtable.h

published 2025-09-19 13 mo ago modified 2026-10-19 20 d ago also EUVD-2025-30356

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.1%
EPSS 0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 4%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

mm: move page table sync declarations to linux/pgtable.h

During our internal testing, we started observing intermittent boot failures when the machine uses 4-level paging and has a large amount of persistent memory:

BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: ffffe70000000034 #PF: supervisor write access in kernel mode #PF: error_code(0x0002) - not-present page PGD 0 P4D 0 Oops: 0002 [#1] SMP NOPTI RIP: 0010:__init_single_page+0x9/0x6d Call Trace: <TASK> __init_zone_device_page+0x17/0x5d memmap_init_zone_device+0x154/0x1bb pagemap_range+0x2e0/0x40f memremap_pages+0x10b/0x2f0 devm_memremap_pages+0x1e/0x60 dev_dax_probe+0xce/0x2ec [device_dax] dax_bus_probe+0x6d/0xc9 [... snip ...] </TASK>

It turns out that the kernel panics while initializing vmemmap (struct page array) when the vmemmap region spans two PGD entries, because the new PGD entry is only installed in init_mm.pgd, but not in the page tables of other tasks.

And looking at __populate_section_memmap(): if (vmemmap_can_optimize(altmap, pgmap)) // does not sync top level page tables r = vmemmap_populate_compound_pages(pfn, start, end, nid, pgmap); else // sync top level page tables in x86 r = vmemmap_populate(start, end, nid, altmap);

In the normal path, vmemmap_populate() in arch/x86/mm/init_64.c synchronizes the top level page table (See commit 9b861528a801 ("x86-64, mem: Update all PGDs for direct mapping and vmemmap mapping changes")) so that all tasks in the system can see the new vmemmap area.

However, when vmemmap_can_optimize() returns true, the optimized path skips synchronization of top-level page tables. This is because vmemmap_populate_compound_pages() is implemented in core MM code, which does not handle synchronization of the top-level page tables. Instead, the core MM has historically relied on each architecture to perform this synchronization manually.

We're not the first party to encounter a crash caused by not-sync'd top level page tables: earlier this year, Gwan-gyeong Mun attempted to address the issue [1] [2] after hitting a kernel panic when x86 code accessed the vmemmap area before the corresponding top-level entries were synced. At that time, the issue was believed to be triggered only when struct page was enlarged for debugging purposes, and the patch did not get further updates.

It turns out that current approach of relying on each arch to handle the page table sync manually is fragile because 1) it's easy to forget to sync the top level page table, and 2) it's also easy to overlook that the kernel should not access the vmemmap and direct mapping areas before the sync.

# The solution: Make page table sync more code robust and harder to miss

To address this, Dave Hansen suggested [3] [4] introducing {pgd,p4d}_populate_kernel() for updating kernel portion of the page tables and allow each architecture to explicitly perform synchronization when installing top-level entries. With this approach, we no longer need to worry about missing the sync step, reducing the risk of future regressions.

The new interface reuses existing ARCH_PAGE_TABLE_SYNC_MASK, PGTBL_P*D_MODIFIED and arch_sync_kernel_mappings() facility used by vmalloc and ioremap to synchronize page tables.

pgd_populate_kernel() looks like this: static inline void pgd_populate_kernel(unsigned long addr, pgd_t *pgd, p4d_t *p4d) { pgd_populate(&init_mm, pgd, p4d); if (ARCH_PAGE_TABLE_SYNC_MASK & PGTBL_PGD_MODIFIED) arch_sync_kernel_mappings(addr, addr); }

It is worth noting that vmalloc() and apply_to_range() carefully synchronizes page tables by calling p*d_alloc_track() and arch_sync_kernel_mappings(), and thus they are not affected by ---truncated---

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 5.15.192, 6.1.151, 6.6.105, 6.12.46, 6.16.6, 6.17
  • Siemens SIMATIC CN 4100 V5.0
  • linux Debian 12 6.1.153-1
  • linux Debian 13 6.12.48-1
  • linux Debian 14 6.16.6-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2025-39844

  • linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-163.173
  • linux Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-106.106
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1097.104
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1050.53
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1097.106
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1052.55
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1093.99
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1048.53

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2025-39844

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-rt Linux Micro 6.2 6.12.0-160000.6.1
  • kernel-64kb SLES 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2, SLES for SAP applications 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
  • kernel-source SLES 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2, SLES for SAP applications 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
  • kernel-default SLES 16.0, SLE High Availability Extension 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2 +1 more 6.12.0-160000.6.1
  • kernel-default-base SLES 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2, SLES for SAP applications 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1.160000.2.4
  • kernel-syms SLES 16.0, Linux Micro Extras 6.2, SLES for SAP applications 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
  • kernel-obs-qa SLES for SAP applications 16.0, SLES 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
  • kernel-kvmsmall SLES for SAP applications 16.0, SLES 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2025:21074-1SUSE-SU-2025:21139-1SUSE-SU-2026:20560-1SUSE-SU-2025:21179-1SUSE-SU-2025:4141-1SUSE-SU-2025:4132-1

  • kernel-rt openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
  • dtb-aarch64 openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
  • kernel-64kb openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
  • kernel-syms openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
  • kernel-obs-qa openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
  • kernel-source openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
  • kernel-default openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
  • kernel-kvmsmall openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2025:20081-1

  • kernel Azure Linux 3.0 6.6.112.1-1
  • kernel CBL-Mariner 2.0 5.15.200.1-1

azure linux advisories AZL-67557AZL-74832

Azure Linux vulnerability data, Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation, from https://github.com/microsoft/AzureLinuxVulnerabilityData via OSV, under the MIT licence; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. MIT

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-2025-39844 updated

kernel: mm: move page table sync declarations to linux/pgtable.h

  • 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 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

0.15% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 4% 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
  • Siemens SIMATIC CN 4100

Classification

Technology feeds

References

Sources

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