Bug 2419895 (CVE-2025-40270)

Summary: CVE-2025-40270 kernel: mm, swap: fix potential UAF issue for VMA readahead
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
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Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedKeywords: Security
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OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in the Linux kernel’s memory management swap and VMA (Virtual Memory Area) readahead implementation. Due to the way __read_swap_cache_async and VMA readahead walk page tables and reference swap devices, the code could invoke the helper on a swap device for which no reference was held. Under a race condition where a swap device is being removed (swapoff) concurrently with readahead activity, this can lead to a use-after-free condition on the swap device object.
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2025-12-08 07:06:54 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

mm, swap: fix potential UAF issue for VMA readahead

Since commit 78524b05f1a3 ("mm, swap: avoid redundant swap device
pinning"), the common helper for allocating and preparing a folio in the
swap cache layer no longer tries to get a swap device reference
internally, because all callers of __read_swap_cache_async are already
holding a swap entry reference.  The repeated swap device pinning isn't
needed on the same swap device.

Caller of VMA readahead is also holding a reference to the target entry's
swap device, but VMA readahead walks the page table, so it might encounter
swap entries from other devices, and call __read_swap_cache_async on
another device without holding a reference to it.

So it is possible to cause a UAF when swapoff of device A raced with
swapin on device B, and VMA readahead tries to read swap entries from
device A.  It's not easy to trigger, but in theory, it could cause real
issues.

Make VMA readahead try to get the device reference first if the swap
device is a different one from the target entry.