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Fencer Vulns
no cvss —

CVE-2026-74599 json

mm/ptdump: always stabilise against page table freeing using init_mm

published 2026-08-22 2 mo ago modified 2026-11-06 2 d ago also EUVD-2026-64536

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 7%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

mm/ptdump: always stabilise against page table freeing using init_mm

Previous commits have established the invariant that kernel page table freeing is performed while an mmap read lock on init_mm is held, which fixes races between ptdump and kernel page table freeing over init_mm.

However, x86 and arm64 can perform a ptdump over an mm other than init_mm via ptdump_walk_pgd() and since kernel memory ranges are shared across non-kernel mm's, this means that the race still exists for these cases.

Fix this by acquiring a nested mmap write lock for init_mm in ptdump_walk_pgd().

This is safe as we take this after mmap write locking the mm, and nothing acquires the init_mm lock first before locking an arbitrary mm, so no deadlock is possible.

Also update walk_page_range_debug() to assert that init_mm is write locked, add a comment explaining why and remove some redundant code, and eliminate the unnecessary and confusing invocation of walk_kernel_page_table_range().

We can safely remove the non-NULL check for walk.mm, as the mmap lock asserts would NULL pointer deref if it was (and of course no callers do this).

The first point at which ptdump can race kernel page table freeing is commit b6bdb7517c3d ("mm/vmalloc: add interfaces to free unmapped page table"), so we target this in the Fixes tag.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 4.5, 4.10, 4.15, 4.16, 5.10.266, 5.15.217, 6.1.191, 6.6.153, 6.12.105, 6.18.45, 7.1.9, 7.2
  • linux Debian 13 6.12.105-1
  • linux Debian 14 7.1.9-1
  • linux-6.12 Debian 12 6.12.107-1~deb12u1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-74599

  • linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-202.212
  • linux Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-42.42
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1119.126
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1016.17
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1120.130
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1016.18
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1115.121
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1113.117

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-74599

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 Azure Linux 3.0 6.6.157.1-1

azure linux advisories AZL-97272

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-2026-74599 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: mm/ptdump: always stabilise against page table freeing using init_mm

  • 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 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
    affected: workaround, no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 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

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
2 d ago

Exploit prediction

0.18% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 7% 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.