CVE-2025-22090

CVE-2025-22090

High · published April 16, 2025

CVSS v3.1
7.3
EPSS
0%
Percentile
11.1
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

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

x86/mm/pat: Fix VM_PAT handling when fork() fails in copy_page_range()

If track_pfn_copy() fails, we already added the dst VMA to the maple

tree. As fork() fails, we'll cleanup the maple tree, and stumble over

the dst VMA for which we neither performed any reservation nor copied

any page tables.

Consequently untrack_pfn() will see VM_PAT and try obtaining the

PAT information from the page table -- which fails because the page

table was not copied.

The easiest fix would be to simply clear the VM_PAT flag of the dst VMA

if track_pfn_copy() fails. However, the whole thing is about "simply"

clearing the VM_PAT flag is shaky as well: if we passed track_pfn_copy()

and performed a reservation, but copying the page tables fails, we'll

simply clear the VM_PAT flag, not properly undoing the reservation ...

which is also wrong.

So let's fix it properly: set the VM_PAT flag only if the reservation

succeeded (leaving it clear initially), and undo the reservation if

anything goes wrong while copying the page tables: clearing the VM_PAT

flag after undoing the reservation.

Note that any copied page table entries will get zapped when the VMA will

get removed later, after copy_page_range() succeeded; as VM_PAT is not set

then, we won't try cleaning VM_PAT up once more and untrack_pfn() will be

happy. Note that leaving these page tables in place without a reservation

is not a problem, as we are aborting fork(); this process will never run.

A reproducer can trigger this usually at the first try:

https://gitlab.com/davidhildenbrand/scratchspace/-/raw/main/reproducers/pat_fork.c

WARNING: CPU: 26 PID: 11650 at arch/x86/mm/pat/memtype.c:983 get_pat_info+0xf6/0x110

Modules linked in: ...

CPU: 26 UID: 0 PID: 11650 Comm: repro3 Not tainted 6.12.0-rc5+ #92

Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS 1.16.3-2.fc40 04/01/2014

RIP: 0010:get_pat_info+0xf6/0x110

...

Call Trace:

<TASK>

...

untrack_pfn+0x52/0x110

unmap_single_vma+0xa6/0xe0

unmap_vmas+0x105/0x1f0

exit_mmap+0xf6/0x460

__mmput+0x4b/0x120

copy_process+0x1bf6/0x2aa0

kernel_clone+0xab/0x440

__do_sys_clone+0x66/0x90

do_syscall_64+0x95/0x180

Likely this case was missed in:

d155df53f310 ("x86/mm/pat: clear VM_PAT if copy_p4d_range failed")

... and instead of undoing the reservation we simply cleared the VM_PAT flag.

Keep the documentation of these functions in include/linux/pgtable.h,

one place is more than sufficient -- we should clean that up for the other

functions like track_pfn_remap/untrack_pfn separately.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS v3.1
7.3 · HIGH
Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:H/A:H
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00214 · 11.1th percentile
Published
2025-04-16T19:16Z
Affected products (4)
ProductVersionsFixed in
linux/linux_kernel≥ 2.6.29, < 6.6.876.6.87
linux/linux_kernel≥ 6.7, < 6.12.236.12.23
linux/linux_kernel≥ 6.13, < 6.13.116.13.11
linux/linux_kernel≥ 6.14, < 6.14.26.14.2
References (8)
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 16 APR 14:12Z
    x86/mm/pat: Fix VM_PAT handling when fork() fails in copy_page_range()
    cvelistv5