CVE-2024-40914: Linux Kernel

Medium severity, CVSS 5.5. EPSS: 0.3% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/huge_memory: don't unpoison huge_zero_folio When I did memory failure tests recently, below panic occurs: kernel BUG at include/linux/mm.h:1135! invalid opcode: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP NOPTI CPU: 9 PID: 137 Comm: kswapd1 Not tainted 6.9.0-rc4-00491-gd5ce28f156fe-dirty #14 RIP: 0010:shrink_huge_zero_page_scan+0x168/0x1a0 RSP: 0018:ffff9933c6c57bd0 EFLAGS: 00000246 RAX: 000000000000003e RBX: 0000000000000000 RCX: ffff88f61fc5c9c8 RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: 0000000000000027 RDI: ffff88f61fc5c9c0 RBP: ffffcd7c446b0000 R08: ffffffff9a9405f0 R09: 0000000000005492 R10: 00000000000030ea R11: ffffffff9a9405f0 R12: 0000000000000000 R13: 0000000000000000 R14: 0000000000000000 R15: ffff88e703c4ac00 FS: 0000000000000000(0000) GS:ffff88f61fc40000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: 000055f4da6e9878 CR3: 0000000c71048000 CR4: 00000000000006f0 Call Trace: <TASK> do_shrink_slab+0x14f/0x6a0 shrink_slab+0xca/0x8c0 shrink_node+0x2d0/0x7d0 balance_pgdat+0x33a/0x720 kswapd+0x1f3/0x410 kthread+0xd5/0x100 ret_from_fork+0x2f/0x50 ret_from_fork_asm+0x1a/0x30 </TASK> Modules linked in: mce_inject hwpoison_inject ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]--- RIP: 0010:shrink_huge_zero_page_scan+0x168/0x1a0 RSP: 0018:ffff9933c6c57bd0 EFLAGS: 00000246 RAX: 000000000000003e RBX: 0000000000000000 RCX: ffff88f61fc5c9c8 RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: 0000000000000027 RDI: ffff88f61fc5c9c0 RBP: ffffcd7c446b0000 R08: ffffffff9a9405f0 R09: 0000000000005492 R10: 00000000000030ea R11: ffffffff9a9405f0 R12: 0000000000000000 R13: 0000000000000000 R14: 0000000000000000 R15: ffff88e703c4ac00 FS: 0000000000000000(0000) GS:ffff88f61fc40000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: 000055f4da6e9878 CR3: 0000000c71048000 CR4: 00000000000006f0 The root cause is that HWPoison flag will be set for huge_zero_folio without increasing the folio refcnt. But then unpoison_memory() will decrease the folio refcnt unexpectedly as it appears like a successfully hwpoisoned folio leading to VM_BUG_ON_PAGE(page_ref_count(page) == 0) when releasing huge_zero_folio. Skip unpoisoning huge_zero_folio in unpoison_memory() to fix this issue. We're not prepared to unpoison huge_zero_folio yet.

Affected products

• Linux Linux Kernel: from 5.15.41, before 5.15.162 (fixed in 5.15.162); from 5.17.9, before 5.18 (fixed in 5.18); from 5.18.1, before 6.1.95 (fixed in 6.1.95); from 6.2, before 6.6.35 (fixed in 6.6.35); from 6.7, before 6.9.6 (fixed in 6.9.6); version 5.18 only

Published 2024-07-12. Last modified 2026-06-17.