Bug 2406730 (CVE-2025-40040) - CVE-2025-40040 kernel: mm/ksm: fix flag-dropping behavior in ksm_madvise
Summary: CVE-2025-40040 kernel: mm/ksm: fix flag-dropping behavior in ksm_madvise
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: CVE-2025-40040
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Product Security DevOps Team
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2025-10-28 12:02 UTC by OSIDB Bzimport
Modified: 2025-10-28 19:27 UTC (History)
0 users

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2025-10-28 12:02:18 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

mm/ksm: fix flag-dropping behavior in ksm_madvise

syzkaller discovered the following crash: (kernel BUG)

[   44.607039] ------------[ cut here ]------------
[   44.607422] kernel BUG at mm/userfaultfd.c:2067!
[   44.608148] Oops: invalid opcode: 0000 [#1] SMP DEBUG_PAGEALLOC KASAN NOPTI
[   44.608814] CPU: 1 UID: 0 PID: 2475 Comm: reproducer Not tainted 6.16.0-rc6 #1 PREEMPT(none)
[   44.609635] Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS rel-1.16.3-0-ga6ed6b701f0a-prebuilt.qemu.org 04/01/2014
[   44.610695] RIP: 0010:userfaultfd_release_all+0x3a8/0x460

<snip other registers, drop unreliable trace>

[   44.617726] Call Trace:
[   44.617926]  <TASK>
[   44.619284]  userfaultfd_release+0xef/0x1b0
[   44.620976]  __fput+0x3f9/0xb60
[   44.621240]  fput_close_sync+0x110/0x210
[   44.622222]  __x64_sys_close+0x8f/0x120
[   44.622530]  do_syscall_64+0x5b/0x2f0
[   44.622840]  entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e
[   44.623244] RIP: 0033:0x7f365bb3f227

Kernel panics because it detects UFFD inconsistency during
userfaultfd_release_all().  Specifically, a VMA which has a valid pointer
to vma->vm_userfaultfd_ctx, but no UFFD flags in vma->vm_flags.

The inconsistency is caused in ksm_madvise(): when user calls madvise()
with MADV_UNMEARGEABLE on a VMA that is registered for UFFD in MINOR mode,
it accidentally clears all flags stored in the upper 32 bits of
vma->vm_flags.

Assuming x86_64 kernel build, unsigned long is 64-bit and unsigned int and
int are 32-bit wide.  This setup causes the following mishap during the &=
~VM_MERGEABLE assignment.

VM_MERGEABLE is a 32-bit constant of type unsigned int, 0x8000'0000. 
After ~ is applied, it becomes 0x7fff'ffff unsigned int, which is then
promoted to unsigned long before the & operation.  This promotion fills
upper 32 bits with leading 0s, as we're doing unsigned conversion (and
even for a signed conversion, this wouldn't help as the leading bit is 0).
& operation thus ends up AND-ing vm_flags with 0x0000'0000'7fff'ffff
instead of intended 0xffff'ffff'7fff'ffff and hence accidentally clears
the upper 32-bits of its value.

Fix it by changing `VM_MERGEABLE` constant to unsigned long, using the
BIT() macro.

Note: other VM_* flags are not affected: This only happens to the
VM_MERGEABLE flag, as the other VM_* flags are all constants of type int
and after ~ operation, they end up with leading 1 and are thus converted
to unsigned long with leading 1s.

Note 2:
After commit 31defc3b01d9 ("userfaultfd: remove (VM_)BUG_ON()s"), this is
no longer a kernel BUG, but a WARNING at the same place:

[   45.595973] WARNING: CPU: 1 PID: 2474 at mm/userfaultfd.c:2067

but the root-cause (flag-drop) remains the same.

[akpm: rust bindgen wasn't able to handle BIT(), from Miguel]


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