CVE-2025-22015 mm/migrate: fix shmem xarray update during migration

High 7.8 Published Updated

A logic error in Linux kernel memory migration causes xarray corruption and potential null pointer dereference, leading to system crashes.

Exploited in the wild
Not known
Login needed
Any signed-in user
Attackable
Local or same network only
Victim action needed
Not needed
Fix
Available

What is CVE-2025-22015?

CVE-2025-22015 is a high-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 8 Apr 2025. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

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

mm/migrate: fix shmem xarray update during migration

A shmem folio can be either in page cache or in swap cache, but not at the same time. Namely, once it is in swap cache, folio->mapping should be NULL, and the folio is no longer in a shmem mapping.

In __folio_migrate_mapping(), to determine the number of xarray entries to update, folio_test_swapbacked() is used, but that conflates shmem in page cache case and shmem in swap cache case. It leads to xarray multi-index entry corruption, since it turns a sibling entry to a normal entry during xas_store() (see [1] for a userspace reproduction). Fix it by only using folio_test_swapcache() to determine whether xarray is storing swap cache entries or not to choose the right number of xarray entries to update.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/[email protected]/

Note: In __split_huge_page(), folio_test_anon() && folio_test_swapcache() is used to get swap_cache address space, but that ignores the shmem folio in swap cache case. It could lead to NULL pointer dereferencing when a in-swap-cache shmem folio is split at __xa_store(), since !folio_test_anon() is true and folio->mapping is NULL. But fortunately, its caller split_huge_page_to_list_to_order() bails out early with EBUSY when folio->mapping is NULL. So no need to take care of it here.

Weakness: CWE-476

Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-22015?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2025-22015?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2025-22015 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-22015 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as BELL-CVE-2025-22015, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-22015, GHSA-2pcw-fg2m-836w, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2404-CVE-2025-22015, UBUNTU-CVE-2025-22015.

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