mm/damon/sysfs: check contexts->nr in repeat_call_fn

published 2026-04-22 6 mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2026-24796

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 1%
public exploits: 0; none known

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

damon_sysfs_repeat_call_fn() calls damon_sysfs_upd_tuned_intervals(), damon_sysfs_upd_schemes_stats(), and damon_sysfs_upd_schemes_effective_quotas() without checking contexts->nr. If nr_contexts is set to 0 via sysfs while DAMON is running, these functions dereference contexts_arr[0] and cause a NULL pointer dereference. Add the missing check.

For example, the issue can be reproduced using DAMON sysfs interface and DAMON user-space tool (damo) [1] like below.

$ sudo damo start --refresh_interval 1s $ echo 0 | sudo tee \ /sys/kernel/mm/damon/admin/kdamonds/0/contexts/nr_contexts

Patch / fix

fixed in 1 distros 1 links 3

Linux Linux 6.18.21, 6.19.11, 7.0

linux Debian 14 6.19.11-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-31457

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-2026-31457 updated 2026-11-06

kernel: mm/damon/sysfs: check contexts->nr in repeat_call_fn

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 1% 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

Classification

Weakness

CWE-476 NULL Pointer Dereference

Technology feeds

Linux kernel rss critical rss

References

Sources

CVE List CVE-2026-31457
NVD CVE-2026-31457

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.

Summary