# CVE-2025-40153: mm: hugetlb: avoid soft lockup when mprotect to large memory area

> A local attacker can cause a soft lockup and system hang by calling mprotect on a large hugetlb memory area, leading to denial of service.

- **Severity:** Not scored
- **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:** Yes
- **Published:** 12 Nov 2025
- **Updated:** 11 May 2026
- **Also known as:** BELL-CVE-2025-40153, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-40153, GHSA-vxqq-p97q-mvpj, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2025-40153, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-13-CVE-2025-40153, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2404-CVE-2025-40153, UBUNTU-CVE-2025-40153

## What is CVE-2025-40153?

CVE-2025-40153 is a denial of service vulnerability in Linux, published on 12 Nov 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: hugetlb: avoid soft lockup when mprotect to large memory area

When calling mprotect() to a large hugetlb memory area in our customer's
workload (~300GB hugetlb memory), soft lockup was observed:

watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#98 stuck for 23s! [t2_new_sysv:126916]

CPU: 98 PID: 126916 Comm: t2_new_sysv Kdump: loaded Not tainted 6.17-rc7
Hardware name: GIGACOMPUTING R2A3-T40-AAV1/Jefferson CIO, BIOS 5.4.4.1 07/15/2025
pstate: 20400009 (nzCv daif +PAN -UAO -TCO -DIT -SSBS BTYPE=--)
pc : mte_clear_page_tags+0x14/0x24
lr : mte_sync_tags+0x1c0/0x240
sp : ffff80003150bb80
x29: ffff80003150bb80 x28: ffff00739e9705a8 x27: 0000ffd2d6a00000
x26: 0000ff8e4bc00000 x25: 00e80046cde00f45 x24: 0000000000022458
x23: 0000000000000000 x22: 0000000000000004 x21: 000000011b380000
x20: ffff000000000000 x19: 000000011b379f40 x18: 0000000000000000
x17: 0000000000000000 x16: 0000000000000000 x15: 0000000000000000
x14: 0000000000000000 x13: 0000000000000000 x12: 0000000000000000
x11: 0000000000000000 x10: 0000000000000000 x9 : ffffc875e0aa5e2c
x8 : 0000000000000000 x7 : 0000000000000000 x6 : 0000000000000000
x5 : fffffc01ce7a5c00 x4 : 00000000046cde00 x3 : fffffc0000000000
x2 : 0000000000000004 x1 : 0000000000000040 x0 : ffff0046cde7c000

Call trace:
  mte_clear_page_tags+0x14/0x24
  set_huge_pte_at+0x25c/0x280
  hugetlb_change_protection+0x220/0x430
  change_protection+0x5c/0x8c
  mprotect_fixup+0x10c/0x294
  do_mprotect_pkey.constprop.0+0x2e0/0x3d4
  __arm64_sys_mprotect+0x24/0x44
  invoke_syscall+0x50/0x160
  el0_svc_common+0x48/0x144
  do_el0_svc+0x30/0xe0
  el0_svc+0x30/0xf0
  el0t_64_sync_handler+0xc4/0x148
  el0t_64_sync+0x1a4/0x1a8

Soft lockup is not triggered with THP or base page because there is
cond_resched() called for each PMD size.

Although the soft lockup was triggered by MTE, it should be not MTE
specific.  The other processing which takes long time in the loop may
trigger soft lockup too.

So add cond_resched() for hugetlb to avoid soft lockup.

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-40153?


## How do I fix CVE-2025-40153?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2025-40153 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-40153 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2025-40153 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2025-40153 is a denial of service vulnerability in Linux, published on 12 Nov 2025. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-40153 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Linux. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-40153/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-40153/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-40153
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-40153
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2025-40153

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-40153/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.