published December 16, 2025
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
crash: fix crashkernel resource shrink
When crashkernel is configured with a high reservation, shrinking its
value below the low crashkernel reservation causes two issues:
1. Invalid crashkernel resource objects
2. Kernel crash if crashkernel shrinking is done twice
For example, with crashkernel=200M,high, the kernel reserves 200MB of high
memory and some default low memory (say 256MB). The reservation appears
as:
cat /proc/iomem | grep -i crash
af000000-beffffff : Crash kernel
433000000-43f7fffff : Crash kernel
If crashkernel is then shrunk to 50MB (echo 52428800 >
/sys/kernel/kexec_crash_size), /proc/iomem still shows 256MB reserved:
af000000-beffffff : Crash kernel
Instead, it should show 50MB:
af000000-b21fffff : Crash kernel
Further shrinking crashkernel to 40MB causes a kernel crash with the
following trace (x86):
BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000038
PGD 0 P4D 0
Oops: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP NOPTI
<snip...>
Call Trace: <TASK>
? __die_body.cold+0x19/0x27
? page_fault_oops+0x15a/0x2f0
? search_module_extables+0x19/0x60
? search_bpf_extables+0x5f/0x80
? exc_page_fault+0x7e/0x180
? asm_exc_page_fault+0x26/0x30
? __release_resource+0xd/0xb0
release_resource+0x26/0x40
__crash_shrink_memory+0xe5/0x110
crash_shrink_memory+0x12a/0x190
kexec_crash_size_store+0x41/0x80
kernfs_fop_write_iter+0x141/0x1f0
vfs_write+0x294/0x460
ksys_write+0x6d/0xf0
<snip...>
This happens because __crash_shrink_memory()/kernel/crash_core.c
incorrectly updates the crashk_res resource object even when
crashk_low_res should be updated.
Fix this by ensuring the correct crashkernel resource object is updated
when shrinking crashkernel memory.