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Fencer Vulns
high 7.8

CVE-2026-31397 json

mm/huge_memory: fix use of NULL folio in move_pages_huge_pmd()

published 2026-04-03 7 mo ago modified 2026-08-05 3 mo ago also EUVD-2026-18776

cvss
7.8
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.1%
EPSS 0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 2%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

mm/huge_memory: fix use of NULL folio in move_pages_huge_pmd()

move_pages_huge_pmd() handles UFFDIO_MOVE for both normal THPs and huge zero pages. For the huge zero page path, src_folio is explicitly set to NULL, and is used as a sentinel to skip folio operations like lock and rmap.

In the huge zero page branch, src_folio is NULL, so folio_mk_pmd(NULL, pgprot) passes NULL through folio_pfn() and page_to_pfn(). With SPARSEMEM_VMEMMAP this silently produces a bogus PFN, installing a PMD pointing to non-existent physical memory. On other memory models it is a NULL dereference.

Use page_folio(src_page) to obtain the valid huge zero folio from the page, which was obtained from pmd_page() and remains valid throughout.

After commit d82d09e48219 ("mm/huge_memory: mark PMD mappings of the huge zero folio special"), moved huge zero PMDs must remain special so vm_normal_page_pmd() continues to treat them as special mappings.

move_pages_huge_pmd() currently reconstructs the destination PMD in the huge zero page branch, which drops PMD state such as pmd_special() on architectures with CONFIG_ARCH_HAS_PTE_SPECIAL. As a result, vm_normal_page_pmd() can treat the moved huge zero PMD as a normal page and corrupt its refcount.

Instead of reconstructing the PMD from the folio, derive the destination entry from src_pmdval after pmdp_huge_clear_flush(), then handle the PMD metadata the same way move_huge_pmd() does for moved entries by marking it soft-dirty and clearing uffd-wp.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.18.20, 6.19.10, 7.0
  • linux Debian 14 6.19.10-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-31397

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-2026-31397 updated

kernel: mm/huge_memory: fix use of NULL folio in move_pages_huge_pmd()

  • 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

0.12% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 2% 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

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Weakness
Technology feeds

References

Sources

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