# CVE-2025-40230: mm: prevent poison consumption when splitting THP

> A local attacker can trigger a kernel panic by inducing a memory error on a Transparent Huge Page, causing a denial of service.

- **Severity:** Not scored
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Local or same network only
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** Yes
- **Published:** 4 Dec 2025
- **Updated:** 11 May 2026
- **Also known as:** BELL-CVE-2025-40230, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-40230, GHSA-9m6m-6jp5-2fmg, UBUNTU-CVE-2025-40230

## What is CVE-2025-40230?

CVE-2025-40230 is a denial of service vulnerability in Linux, published on 4 Dec 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: prevent poison consumption when splitting THP

When performing memory error injection on a THP (Transparent Huge Page)
mapped to userspace on an x86 server, the kernel panics with the following
trace.  The expected behavior is to terminate the affected process instead
of panicking the kernel, as the x86 Machine Check code can recover from an
in-userspace #MC.

  mce: [Hardware Error]: CPU 0: Machine Check Exception: f Bank 3: bd80000000070134
  mce: [Hardware Error]: RIP 10:<ffffffff8372f8bc> {memchr_inv+0x4c/0xf0}
  mce: [Hardware Error]: TSC afff7bbff88a ADDR 1d301b000 MISC 80 PPIN 1e741e77539027db
  mce: [Hardware Error]: PROCESSOR 0:d06d0 TIME 1758093249 SOCKET 0 APIC 0 microcode 80000320
  mce: [Hardware Error]: Run the above through 'mcelog --ascii'
  mce: [Hardware Error]: Machine check: Data load in unrecoverable area of kernel
  Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal local machine check

The root cause of this panic is that handling a memory failure triggered
by an in-userspace #MC necessitates splitting the THP.  The splitting
process employs a mechanism, implemented in
try_to_map_unused_to_zeropage(), which reads the pages in the THP to
identify zero-filled pages.  However, reading the pages in the THP results
in a second in-kernel #MC, occurring before the initial memory_failure()
completes, ultimately leading to a kernel panic.  See the kernel panic
call trace on the two #MCs.

  First Machine Check occurs // [1]
    memory_failure()         // [2]
      try_to_split_thp_page()
        split_huge_page()
          split_huge_page_to_list_to_order()
            __folio_split()  // [3]
              remap_page()
                remove_migration_ptes()
                  remove_migration_pte()
                    try_to_map_unused_to_zeropage()  // [4]
                      memchr_inv()                   // [5]
                        Second Machine Check occurs  // [6]
                          Kernel panic

[1] Triggered by accessing a hardware-poisoned THP in userspace, which is
    typically recoverable by terminating the affected process.

[2] Call folio_set_has_hwpoisoned() before try_to_split_thp_page().

[3] Pass the RMP_USE_SHARED_ZEROPAGE remap flag to remap_page().

[4] Try to map the unused THP to zeropage.

[5] Re-access pages in the hw-poisoned THP in the kernel.

[6] Triggered in-kernel, leading to a panic kernel.

In Step[2], memory_failure() sets the poisoned flag on the page in the THP
by TestSetPageHWPoison() before calling try_to_split_thp_page().

As suggested by David Hildenbrand, fix this panic by not accessing to the
poisoned page in the THP during zeropage identification, while continuing
to scan unaffected pages in the THP for possible zeropage mapping.  This
prevents a second in-kernel #MC that would cause kernel panic in Step[4].

Thanks to Andrew Zaborowski for his initial work on fixing this issue.

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-40230?


## How do I fix CVE-2025-40230?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2025-40230 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-40230 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2025-40230 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2025-40230 is a denial of service vulnerability in Linux, published on 4 Dec 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-2025-40230 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-2025-40230/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-40230/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-40230
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-40230
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2025-40230

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-40230/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.