CVE-2026-53207
MediumCVSS 5.5Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk1th percentile — higher than 1% of all known CVEs
Summary
A deadlock vulnerability (AA deadlock) was found in the Linux kernel's memory failure handling. Two concurrent madvise(MADV_HWPOISON) calls on the same hugetlb page can cause a recursive spinlock self-deadlock on hugetlb_lock when racing with a concurrent unmap.
Risk Assessment
The deadlock can cause system hang or kernel crash, leading to denial of service (DoS) for all processes using hugetlb memory.
Recommendation
Immediately update the Linux kernel to a version containing the fix (commit resolving the issue). If an update is not possible, avoid concurrent MADV_HWPOISON usage on shared hugetlb pages.
Original NVD description (English source)
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/memory-failure: fix hugetlb_lock AA deadlock in get_huge_page_for_hwpoison Two concurrent madvise(MADV_HWPOISON) calls on the same hugetlb page can trigger a recursive spinlock self-deadlock (AA deadlock) on hugetlb_lock when racing with a concurrent unmap: thread#0 thread#1 -------- -------- madvise(folio, MADV_HWPOISON) -> poisons the folio successfully madvise(folio, MADV_HWPOISON) unmap(folio) try_memory_failure_hugetlb get_huge_page_for_hwpoison spin_lock_irq(&hugetlb_lock) <- held __get_huge_page_for_hwpoison hugetlb_update_hwpoison() -> MF_HUGETLB_FOLIO_PRE_POISONED goto out: folio_put() refcount: 1 -> 0 free_huge_folio() spin_lock_irqsave(&hugetlb_lock) -> AA DEADLOCK! The out: path in __get_huge_page_for_hwpoison() calls folio_put() to drop the GUP reference while the hugetlb_lock is still held by the hugetlb.c wrapper get_huge_page_for_hwpoison(). If concurrent unmap has released the page table mapping reference, folio_put() drops the folio refcount to zero, triggering free_huge_folio() which attempts to re-acquire the non-recursive hugetlb_lock. Fix this by moving hugetlb_lock acquisition from the hugetlb.c wrapper into get_huge_page_for_hwpoison(). Place spin_unlock_irq() before the folio_put() at the out: label so the folio is always released outside the lock. [[email protected]: fix race, rename label per Miaohe]