published August 15, 2026
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
cgroup/cpuset: rebind mm mempolicy to effective_mems, not mems_allowed
Creating a child cpuset where cpuset.mems is never set leads to a div/0
when a VMA mempolicy with MPOL_F_RELATIVE_NODES rebinds in response to a
CPU hotplug event.
Reproduction steps:
1) Create a cgroup w/ cpuset controls (do not set cpuset.mems)
2) Move the task into the child cpuset
3) Create a VMA mempolicy for that task with MPOL_F_RELATIVE_NODES
4) unplug and hotplug a cpu
echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online
echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online
5) mempolicy rebind does a div/0 in mpol_relative_nodemask on the
call to __nodes_fold()
The cpuset code passes (cs->mems_allowed) which is not guaranteed to have
nodes to the rebind routine. Use cs->effective_mems instead, which is
guaranteed to have a non-empty nodemask once we reach that code path.
[ david: add a comment, slightly rephrase description ]