Skip to content
Fencer Vulns
no cvss —

CVE-2025-39992 json

mm: swap: check for stable address space before operating on the VMA

published 2025-10-15 12 mo ago modified 2026-10-19 20 d ago also EUVD-2025-34581

cvss
—
not scored
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: swap: check for stable address space before operating on the VMA

It is possible to hit a zero entry while traversing the vmas in unuse_mm() called from swapoff path and accessing it causes the OOPS:

Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 0000000000000446--> Loading the memory from offset 0x40 on the XA_ZERO_ENTRY as address. Mem abort info: ESR = 0x0000000096000005 EC = 0x25: DABT (current EL), IL = 32 bits SET = 0, FnV = 0 EA = 0, S1PTW = 0 FSC = 0x05: level 1 translation fault

The issue is manifested from the below race between the fork() on a process and swapoff: fork(dup_mmap()) swapoff(unuse_mm) --------------- ----------------- 1) Identical mtree is built using __mt_dup().

2) copy_pte_range()--> copy_nonpresent_pte(): The dst mm is added into the mmlist to be visible to the swapoff operation.

3) Fatal signal is sent to the parent process(which is the current during the fork) thus skip the duplication of the vmas and mark the vma range with XA_ZERO_ENTRY as a marker for this process that helps during exit_mmap().

4) swapoff is tried on the 'mm' added to the 'mmlist' as part of the 2.

5) unuse_mm(), that iterates through the vma's of this 'mm' will hit the non-NULL zero entry and operating on this zero entry as a vma is resulting into the oops.

The proper fix would be around not exposing this partially-valid tree to others when droping the mmap lock, which is being solved with [1]. A simpler solution would be checking for MMF_UNSTABLE, as it is set if mm_struct is not fully initialized in dup_mmap().

Thanks to Liam/Lorenzo/David for all the suggestions in fixing this issue.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.12.51, 6.16.11, 6.17.1, 6.18
  • linux Debian 13 6.12.57-1
  • linux Debian 14 6.16.11-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2025-39992

  • linux Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-106.106
  • linux Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-6.6
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1050.53
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-1003.3
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1052.55
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-1003.3
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1048.53
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1049.49

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2025-39992

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 6.12.0-160000.7.1
  • kernel-64kb SLES 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2, SLES for SAP applications 16.0 6.12.0-160000.7.1
  • kernel-source SLES 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2, SLES for SAP applications 16.0 6.12.0-160000.7.1
  • kernel-default SLES 16.0, SLE High Availability Extension 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2 +1 more 6.12.0-160000.7.1
  • 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 6.12.0-160000.7.1
  • kernel-obs-qa SLES for SAP applications 16.0, SLES 16.0 6.12.0-160000.7.1
  • kernel-kvmsmall SLES for SAP applications 16.0, SLES 16.0 6.12.0-160000.7.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2025:21080-1SUSE-SU-2025:21147-1SUSE-SU-2025:21180-1SUSE-SU-2026:20561-1

  • kernel-source-longterm openSUSE Tumbleweed 6.18.16-1.1
  • kernel-rt openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.7.1
  • dtb-aarch64 openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.7.1
  • kernel-64kb openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.7.1
  • kernel-syms openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.7.1
  • kernel-obs-qa openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.7.1
  • kernel-source openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.7.1
  • kernel-default openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.7.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:10301-1openSUSE-SU-2025:20091-1openSUSE-SU-2025:15671-1

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-2025-39992 updated cvss 4.7

kernel: mm: swap: check for stable address space before operating on the VMA

  • 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 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • 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
    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

0.20% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 9% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

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.