Bug 2439929 (CVE-2026-23177)

Summary: CVE-2026-23177 kernel: mm, shmem: prevent infinite loop on truncate race
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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An infinite loop vulnerability was found in the Linux kernel's shmem (shared memory) truncate handling. When truncating a large swap entry where the index points to the middle of the entry, the code can enter an infinite loop repeatedly finding and failing to free the same entry, causing a system hang.
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-02-14 17:03:34 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

mm, shmem: prevent infinite loop on truncate race

When truncating a large swap entry, shmem_free_swap() returns 0 when the
entry's index doesn't match the given index due to lookup alignment.  The
failure fallback path checks if the entry crosses the end border and
aborts when it happens, so truncate won't erase an unexpected entry or
range.  But one scenario was ignored.

When `index` points to the middle of a large swap entry, and the large
swap entry doesn't go across the end border, find_get_entries() will
return that large swap entry as the first item in the batch with
`indices[0]` equal to `index`.  The entry's base index will be smaller
than `indices[0]`, so shmem_free_swap() will fail and return 0 due to the
"base < index" check.  The code will then call shmem_confirm_swap(), get
the order, check if it crosses the END boundary (which it doesn't), and
retry with the same index.

The next iteration will find the same entry again at the same index with
same indices, leading to an infinite loop.

Fix this by retrying with a round-down index, and abort if the index is
smaller than the truncate range.