CVE-2026-23375 PUBLISHED

mm: thp: deny THP for files on anonymous inodes

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 13.01.2026 Published: 25.03.2026 Updated: 25.03.2026

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

mm: thp: deny THP for files on anonymous inodes

file_thp_enabled() incorrectly allows THP for files on anonymous inodes (e.g. guest_memfd and secretmem). These files are created via alloc_file_pseudo(), which does not call get_write_access() and leaves inode->i_writecount at 0. Combined with S_ISREG(inode->i_mode) being true, they appear as read-only regular files when CONFIG_READ_ONLY_THP_FOR_FS is enabled, making them eligible for THP collapse.

Anonymous inodes can never pass the inode_is_open_for_write() check since their i_writecount is never incremented through the normal VFS open path. The right thing to do is to exclude them from THP eligibility altogether, since CONFIG_READ_ONLY_THP_FOR_FS was designed for real filesystem files (e.g. shared libraries), not for pseudo-filesystem inodes.

For guest_memfd, this allows khugepaged and MADV_COLLAPSE to create large folios in the page cache via the collapse path, but the guest_memfd fault handler does not support large folios. This triggers WARN_ON_ONCE(folio_test_large(folio)) in kvm_gmem_fault_user_mapping().

For secretmem, collapse_file() tries to copy page contents through the direct map, but secretmem pages are removed from the direct map. This can result in a kernel crash:

<pre>BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: ffff88810284d000 RIP: 0010:memcpy_orig+0x16/0x130 Call Trace: collapse_file hpage_collapse_scan_file madvise_collapse </pre>

Secretmem is not affected by the crash on upstream as the memory failure recovery handles the failed copy gracefully, but it still triggers confusing false memory failure reports:

<pre>Memory failure: 0x106d96f: recovery action for clean unevictable LRU page: Recovered </pre>

Check IS_ANON_FILE(inode) in file_thp_enabled() to deny THP for all anonymous inode files.

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 7fbb5e188248c50f737720825da1864ce42536d1 to 08de46a75f91a6661bc1ce0a93614f4bc313c581 (excl.)
  • affected from 7fbb5e188248c50f737720825da1864ce42536d1 to 0524ee56af2c9bfbad152a810f1ca95de8ca00d7 (excl.)
  • affected from 7fbb5e188248c50f737720825da1864ce42536d1 to f6fa05f0dddd387417d0c28281ddb951582514d6 (excl.)
  • affected from 7fbb5e188248c50f737720825da1864ce42536d1 to dd085fe9a8ebfc5d10314c60452db38d2b75e609 (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 6.8 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 6.8 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 6.12.78 to 6.12.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.18.17 to 6.18.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.19.7 to 6.19.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.0-rc2 to * (incl.)

References