CVEvulnerability
CVE-2026-72212
- Status
- Received
- Published
- 2026-08-15
- Last modified
- 2026-08-17
- Assigner
- 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
mm/memory_hotplug: fix incorrect altmap passing in error path
In create_altmaps_and_memory_blocks(), when arch_add_memory() succeeds
with memmap_on_memory enabled, the vmemmap pages are allocated from
params.altmap. If create_memory_block_devices() subsequently fails, the
error path calls arch_remove_memory() with a NULL altmap instead of
params.altmap.
This is a bug that could lead to memory corruption. Since altmap is NULL,
vmemmap_free() falls back to freeing the vmemmap pages into the system
buddy allocator via free_pages() instead of the altmap.
arch_remove_memory() then immediately destroys the physical linear mapping
for this memory. This injects unowned pages into the buddy allocator,
causing machine checks or memory corruption if the system later attempts
to allocate and use those freed pages.
Fix this by passing params.altmap to arch_remove_memory() in the error
path.
References
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2f9e3ec17c3d2093c664c00a027588a446c39894 git.kernel.org
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2fac4afa0e2e68841334c78c1821e49f74fbc66a git.kernel.org
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3833e6abdbbfb59ec8203a84a84206cb7ffb41ac git.kernel.org
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/722e6c54bde6391fb95f0357f555aca887c7b18c git.kernel.org