CVE-2026-23375

About vulnerability

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm: thp: deny THP for files on anonymous inodes file_thp_enabled() incorrectly allows THP for files on anonymous inodes (e.g. guest_memfd and secretmem). These files are created via alloc_file_pseudo(), which does not call get_write_access() and leaves inode->i_writecount at 0. Combined with S_ISREG(inode->i_mode) being true, they appear as read-only regular files when CONFIG_READ_ONLY_THP_FOR_FS is enabled, making them eligible for THP collapse. Anonymous inodes can never pass the inode_is_open_for_write() check since their i_writecount is never incremented through the normal VFS open path. The right thing to do is to exclude them from THP eligibility altogether, since CONFIG_READ_ONLY_THP_FOR_FS was designed for real filesystem files (e.g. shared libraries), not for pseudo-filesystem inodes. For guest_memfd, this allows khugepaged and MADV_COLLAPSE to create large folios in the page cache via the collapse path, but the guest_memfd fault handler does not support large folios. This triggers WARN_ON_ONCE(folio_test_large(folio)) in kvm_gmem_fault_user_mapping(). For secretmem, collapse_file() tries to copy page contents through the direct map, but secretmem pages are removed from the direct map. This can result in a kernel crash: BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: ffff88810284d000 RIP: 0010:memcpy_orig+0x16/0x130 Call Trace: collapse_file hpage_collapse_scan_file madvise_collapse Secretmem is not affected by the crash on upstream as the memory failure recovery handles the failed copy gracefully, but it still triggers confusing false memory failure reports: Memory failure: 0x106d96f: recovery action for clean unevictable LRU page: Recovered Check IS_ANON_FILE(inode) in file_thp_enabled() to deny THP for all anonymous inode files. A flaw was found in the Linux kernel’s Transparent Huge Pages (THP) mechanism. This vulnerability occurs because the file_thp_enabled() function incorrectly allows THP for files on anonymous inodes, which are not designed for this feature. An attacker could potentially exploit this by manipulating specific memory operations, leading to a kernel crash when handling secret memory pages. Additionally, it can cause incorrect memory failure reports for guest memory files.

Live-patch status from KernelCare for each operating system.