CVE-2026-31397 PUBLISHED

mm/huge_memory: fix use of NULL folio in move_pages_huge_pmd()

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 09.03.2026 Published: 03.04.2026 Updated: 03.04.2026

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

mm/huge_memory: fix use of NULL folio in move_pages_huge_pmd()

move_pages_huge_pmd() handles UFFDIO_MOVE for both normal THPs and huge zero pages. For the huge zero page path, src_folio is explicitly set to NULL, and is used as a sentinel to skip folio operations like lock and rmap.

In the huge zero page branch, src_folio is NULL, so folio_mk_pmd(NULL, pgprot) passes NULL through folio_pfn() and page_to_pfn(). With SPARSEMEM_VMEMMAP this silently produces a bogus PFN, installing a PMD pointing to non-existent physical memory. On other memory models it is a NULL dereference.

Use page_folio(src_page) to obtain the valid huge zero folio from the page, which was obtained from pmd_page() and remains valid throughout.

After commit d82d09e48219 ("mm/huge_memory: mark PMD mappings of the huge zero folio special"), moved huge zero PMDs must remain special so vm_normal_page_pmd() continues to treat them as special mappings.

move_pages_huge_pmd() currently reconstructs the destination PMD in the huge zero page branch, which drops PMD state such as pmd_special() on architectures with CONFIG_ARCH_HAS_PTE_SPECIAL. As a result, vm_normal_page_pmd() can treat the moved huge zero PMD as a normal page and corrupt its refcount.

Instead of reconstructing the PMD from the folio, derive the destination entry from src_pmdval after pmdp_huge_clear_flush(), then handle the PMD metadata the same way move_huge_pmd() does for moved entries by marking it soft-dirty and clearing uffd-wp.

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from e3981db444a0a18d350d9f92e3f2e8d489b54211 to f3caaee0f9e489fd2282d4ce45791dc8aed2da62 (excl.)
  • affected from e3981db444a0a18d350d9f92e3f2e8d489b54211 to e3133d0986dc5a231d5419167dbac65312b28b41 (excl.)
  • affected from e3981db444a0a18d350d9f92e3f2e8d489b54211 to fae654083bfa409bb2244f390232e2be47f05bfc (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 6.16 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 6.16 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 6.18.20 to 6.18.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.19.10 to 6.19.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.0-rc5 to * (incl.)

References