Skip to content
Fencer Intel
no cvss —

CVE-2026-97943 json

x86/mm/pat: Acquire init_mm write lock on collapse to avoid UAF

published last mo. modified 24d ago also EUVD-2026-86797

cvss
—
not scored
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 10%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

x86/mm/pat: Acquire init_mm write lock on collapse to avoid UAF

x86 implements page attribute modification using its Change Page Attributes (CPA) mechanism.

This tracks properties of ranges such as cache mode through x86 page attributes, and as part of that logic manipulates kernel page tables.

Since commit:

41d88484c71c ("x86/mm/pat: restore large ROX pages after fragmentation")

ranges of kernel page table entries can be collapsed into huge page table entries as part of this logic.

As part of this collapse, it frees the page tables which the collapsed entries previously pointed to, and it does so without any relevant locks being held to preclude concurrent kernel page table walkers.

The only way this code can be reached is if CPA_COLLAPSE is specified, and this is only set in set_memory_rox() via:

set_memory_rox() -> change_page_attr_set_clr() -> cpa_flush() -> cpa_collapse_large_pages()

Notable users of this are execmem and BPF when manipulating executable mappings.

However, this is problematic for ptdump as it walks ranges it does not own and thus runs the risk of a use-after-free on page tables freed underneath it.

In addition, concurrent CPA collapse operations are possible which can also cause races.

Resolve the issue by acquiring the mmap write lock on init_mm across the whole operation.

It is safe to acquire a sleeping lock as all the callers invoke set_memory_rox() from process context and in any case, change_page_attr_set_clr() calls vm_unmap_alias() which ultimately takes a mutex, disallowing atomic context here.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.18.53, 7.2.7, 7.3
  • linux Debian 14 7.2.7-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-97943

  • linux Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-42.42
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1016.17
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1016.18
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1017.17
  • linux-riscv Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-42.42.1
  • linux-oracle Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1015.16
  • linux-hwe-7.0 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 7.0.0-42.42~24.04.1
  • linux-oem-7.0 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1017.17

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-97943

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • kernel-rt Linux Micro 6.2 6.12.0-160000.40.1
  • kernel-64kb SLES 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2, SLES for SAP applications 16.0 6.12.0-160000.40.1
  • kernel-source SLES 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2, SLES for SAP applications 16.0 6.12.0-160000.40.1
  • kernel-default SLES 16.0, SLE High Availability Extension 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2 +1 more 6.12.0-160000.40.1
  • kernel-default-base SLES 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2, SLES for SAP applications 16.0 6.12.0-160000.40.1.160000.2.29
  • kernel-syms SLES 16.0, Linux Micro Extras 6.2, SLES for SAP applications 16.0 6.12.0-160000.40.1
  • kernel-azure SLES for SAP applications 16.0, SLES 16.0 6.12.0-160000.40.1
  • kernel-obs-qa SLES for SAP applications 16.0, SLES 16.0 6.12.0-160000.40.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2026:24422-1SUSE-SU-2026:24446-1SUSE-SU-2026:24437-1SUSE-SU-2026:24386-1

  • kernel-rt openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.40.1
  • dtb-aarch64 openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.40.1
  • kernel-64kb openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.40.1
  • kernel-syms openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.40.1
  • kernel-azure openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.40.1
  • kernel-obs-qa openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.40.1
  • kernel-source openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.40.1
  • kernel-default openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.40.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:22167-1openSUSE-SU-2026:12074-1

Is CVE-2026-97943 in your stack? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

Check with Fencer

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-97943 updated cvss 4.7

kernel: x86/mm/pat: Acquire init_mm write lock on collapse to avoid UAF

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel
    affected: workaround, no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-8, openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 5 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

0.20% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 10% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.