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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2026-64130 json

mm/page_alloc: fix initialization of tags of the huge zero folio with init_on_free

published 2026-07-19 3 mo ago modified 2026-08-13 2 mo ago also EUVD-2026-45815

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 5%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

mm/page_alloc: fix initialization of tags of the huge zero folio with init_on_free

__GFP_ZEROTAGS semantics are currently a bit weird, but effectively this flag is only ever set alongside __GFP_ZERO and __GFP_SKIP_KASAN.

If we run with init_on_free, we will zero out pages during __free_pages_prepare(), to skip zeroing on the allocation path.

However, when allocating with __GFP_ZEROTAG set, post_alloc_hook() will consequently not only skip clearing page content, but also skip clearing tag memory.

Not clearing tags through __GFP_ZEROTAGS is irrelevant for most pages that will get mapped to user space through set_pte_at() later: set_pte_at() and friends will detect that the tags have not been initialized yet (PG_mte_tagged not set), and initialize them.

However, for the huge zero folio, which will be mapped through a PMD marked as special, this initialization will not be performed, ending up exposing whatever tags were still set for the pages.

The docs (Documentation/arch/arm64/memory-tagging-extension.rst) state that allocation tags are set to 0 when a page is first mapped to user space. That no longer holds with the huge zero folio when init_on_free is enabled.

Fix it by decoupling __GFP_ZEROTAGS from __GFP_ZERO, passing to tag_clear_highpages() whether we want to also clear page content.

Invert the meaning of the tag_clear_highpages() return value to have clearer semantics.

Reproduced with the huge zero folio by modifying the check_buffer_fill arm64/mte selftest to use a 2 MiB area, after making sure that pages have a non-0 tag set when freeing (note that, during boot, we will not actually initialize tags, but only set KASAN_TAG_KERNEL in the page flags).

$ ./check_buffer_fill 1..20 ... not ok 17 Check initial tags with private mapping, sync error mode and mmap memory not ok 18 Check initial tags with private mapping, sync error mode and mmap/mprotect memory ...

This code needs more cleanups; we'll tackle that next, like decoupling __GFP_ZEROTAGS from __GFP_SKIP_KASAN.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: s/__GPF_ZERO/__GFP_ZERO/, per David]

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.18.34, 7.0.11, 7.1
  • linux Debian 14 7.0.12-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-64130

  • linux Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-28.28
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1009.9
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1008.8
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1003.4
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1010.10
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1010.10
  • linux-raspi Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1015.15
  • linux-riscv Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-28.28.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-64130

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-2026-64130 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: mm/page_alloc: fix initialization of tags of the huge zero folio with init_on_free

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • 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

0.16% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 5% 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-908 Use of Uninitialized Resource
Technology feeds

References

Sources

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