Bug 2528766 (CVE-2026-80893)

Summary: CVE-2026-80893 kernel: mm/hugetlb: fix swap entry corruption when clearing uffd-wp at fork()
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedCC: akhatavk, aos-team-art-private, asdas, dpaolell, jdelft, jupierce, lgarciaa, mbiarnes, ppalepu, ppostler, prdhamdh, rhel-process-autobot, sghai, sidsharm, suppawar, vlaad, watson-tool-maintainers
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's huge page (hugetlb) memory management. A local user could trigger a memory corruption vulnerability during a process duplication (fork()) operation. This occurs when the kernel incorrectly clears a specific bit in swap entries for huge pages, leading to the corruption of memory entries copied into the child process. While the immediate impact may be latent, this corruption can propagate and potentially lead to system instability or unexpected behavior.
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-09-04 17:28:26 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

mm/hugetlb: fix swap entry corruption when clearing uffd-wp at fork()

copy_hugetlb_page_range() clears the uffd-wp bit of migration and hwpoison
entries with huge_pte_clear_uffd_wp(), which operates on the present-PTE
bit position.  Swap entries keep the uffd-wp state elsewhere -- the
migration branch reads and sets it with pte_swp_uffd_wp() and
pte_swp_mkuffd_wp() -- and the present-PTE position falls into the swap
payload.  On x86-64 it lands in the inverted swap offset, where a
naturally-aligned hugetlb PFN always has the affected bit set, so the
clear advances the encoded PFN by two pages.

No userfaultfd needs to be involved: the clear is guarded only by the
child VMA not being uffd-wp registered, so a plain fork() with an
in-flight hugetlb migration entry (or a poisoned hugetlb page) corrupts
the entry copied into the child.  Instrumenting the clear and forking
after MADV_HWPOISON on a 2MB anon hugetlb page shows:

  offset before=120e00
  offset after =120e02

The fallout is mostly latent: rmap walks match migration entries by folio
range and remove_migration_pte() rebuilds the PTE from the folio, so a
within-folio PFN skew heals once migration completes.  But any path that
re-encodes the corrupted offset -- e.g.  hugetlb_change_protection()
rewriting a writable migration entry via
make_readable_migration_entry(swp_offset(entry)) -- propagates it.

Migration entries legitimately carry uffd-wp, so clear it with
pte_swp_clear_uffd_wp(), matching copy_nonpresent_pte() and
move_huge_pte().

A hwpoison entry, on the other hand, never carries the uffd-wp bit: it is
installed fresh by make_hwpoison_entry() (try_to_unmap_one() does not
preserve uffd-wp on the hwpoison path) and hugetlb_change_protection()
leaves hwpoison entries untouched.  There was nothing to clear there, only
the corruption, so drop the clear entirely.