CVE-2026-93232 json
mm/hugetlb: fix boot panic with CONFIG_DEBUG_VM and HVO bootmem pages
published 2026-09-24 45 d ago modified 2026-10-19 20 d ago also EUVD-2026-86237
- 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 4%
- public exploits
- 0
- none known
Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
mm/hugetlb: fix boot panic with CONFIG_DEBUG_VM and HVO bootmem pages
Patch series "mm: Refactor bootmem gigantic hugepage allocation", v4.
This series is split out from the earlier larger series "mm: Generalize HVO for HugeTLB and device DAX" [1]. It collects the first 19 patches of that series as a standalone set of fixes and preparatory cleanups around bootmem HugeTLB handling, sparse initialization ordering, and related vmemmap setup.
The first patches fix a few bugs found while reviewing the existing code, including incorrect bootmem HVO handling, wrong vmemmap registration arguments, a powerpc compound-vmemmap tracking bug, and too-late initialization of gigantic bootmem HugeTLB struct pages.
The rest of the series reorders early memory initialization so the relevant zone state is available before sparse and HugeTLB boot-time setup runs, then simplifies the remaining bootmem gigantic hugepage allocation path and removes code made obsolete by that rework.
At a high level: - patches [1-4] fix boot-time and arch-specific bugs - patches [5-12] reorder and simplify sparse/mm/hugetlb early init - patches [13-19] refactor bootmem gigantic hugepage allocation and remove obsolete helpers and state
This patch (of 19):
Commit 622026e87c40 ("mm/hugetlb: remove fake head pages") switched HVO to reuse per-zone shared tail pages from zone->vmemmap_tails[].
Those shared tail pages were initialized in hugetlb_vmemmap_init(), but bootmem HugeTLB folios are prepared earlier from gather_bootmem_prealloc(). With hugetlb_free_vmemmap=on, prep_and_add_bootmem_folios() can access pageblock flags on bootmem HugeTLB pages whose mirrored tail struct pages already point to the shared tail page. On CONFIG_DEBUG_VM kernels, get_pfnblock_bitmap_bitidx() then dereferences the still-uninitialized shared tail page and can panic during boot.
Initialize zone->vmemmap_tails[] from gather_bootmem_prealloc(), before bootmem HugeTLB folios are processed, and drop the later initialization from hugetlb_vmemmap_init().
This bug only affects CONFIG_DEBUG_VM kernels, where the relevant assertion is evaluated.
Patch / fix
- Linux Linux 7.2.4, 7.3
- linux Debian 14 7.2.6-1
debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-93232
- kernel-source openSUSE Tumbleweed 7.2.8-1.1
opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:11893-1
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-2026-93232 updated cvss 5.5
kernel: mm/hugetlb: fix boot panic with CONFIG_DEBUG_VM and HVO bootmem pages
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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 moreaffected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
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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 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-8, openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 5 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9not 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
0.15% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 4% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).
Affected products
- Linux Linux
Classification
- Technology feeds
References
Sources
- CVE List CVE-2026-93232
- NVD CVE-2026-93232
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