Bug 2418803 (CVE-2025-40218)

Summary: CVE-2025-40218 kernel: mm/damon/vaddr: do not repeat pte_offset_map_lock() until success
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
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Version: unspecifiedKeywords: Security
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OS: Linux   
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2025-12-04 15:02:14 UTC 
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

mm/damon/vaddr: do not repeat pte_offset_map_lock() until success

DAMON's virtual address space operation set implementation (vaddr) calls
pte_offset_map_lock() inside the page table walk callback function.  This
is for reading and writing page table accessed bits.  If
pte_offset_map_lock() fails, it retries by returning the page table walk
callback function with ACTION_AGAIN.

pte_offset_map_lock() can continuously fail if the target is a pmd
migration entry, though.  Hence it could cause an infinite page table walk
if the migration cannot be done until the page table walk is finished. 
This indeed caused a soft lockup when CPU hotplugging and DAMON were
running in parallel.

Avoid the infinite loop by simply not retrying the page table walk.  DAMON
is promising only a best-effort accuracy, so missing access to such pages
is no problem.
Comment 1 Alexander B 2025-12-05 17:11:12 UTC 
Upstream advisory:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/2025120452-CVE-2025-40218-d4dc@gregkh/T