CVE-2026-31686 mm/kasan: fix double free for kasan pXds
A double-free vulnerability in the Linux kernel's KASAN module allows local attackers to cause a system crash or potentially execute arbitrary code.
- 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-2026-31686?
CVE-2026-31686 is a high-severity use after free vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 27 Apr 2026. 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/kasan: fix double free for kasan pXds
kasan_free_pxd() assumes the page table is always struct page aligned. But that's not always the case for all architectures. E.g. In case of powerpc with 64K pagesize, PUD table (of size 4096) comes from slab cache named pgtable-2^9. Hence instead of page_to_virt(pxd_page()) let's just directly pass the start of the pxd table which is passed as the 1st argument.
This fixes the below double free kasan issue seen with PMEM:
radix-mmu: Mapped 0x0000047d10000000-0x0000047f90000000 with 2.00 MiB pages ================================================================== BUG: KASAN: double-free in kasan_remove_zero_shadow+0x9c4/0xa20 Free of addr c0000003c38e0000 by task ndctl/2164
CPU: 34 UID: 0 PID: 2164 Comm: ndctl Not tainted 6.19.0-rc1-00048-gea1013c15392 #157 VOLUNTARY Hardware name: IBM,9080-HEX POWER10 (architected) 0x800200 0xf000006 of:IBM,FW1060.00 (NH1060_012) hv:phyp pSeries Call Trace: dump_stack_lvl+0x88/0xc4 (unreliable) print_report+0x214/0x63c kasan_report_invalid_free+0xe4/0x110 check_slab_allocation+0x100/0x150 kmem_cache_free+0x128/0x6e0 kasan_remove_zero_shadow+0x9c4/0xa20 memunmap_pages+0x2b8/0x5c0 devm_action_release+0x54/0x70 release_nodes+0xc8/0x1a0 devres_release_all+0xe0/0x140 device_unbind_cleanup+0x30/0x120 device_release_driver_internal+0x3e4/0x450 unbind_store+0xfc/0x110 drv_attr_store+0x78/0xb0 sysfs_kf_write+0x114/0x140 kernfs_fop_write_iter+0x264/0x3f0 vfs_write+0x3bc/0x7d0 ksys_write+0xa4/0x190 system_call_exception+0x190/0x480 system_call_vectored_common+0x15c/0x2ec ---- interrupt: 3000 at 0x7fff93b3d3f4 NIP: 00007fff93b3d3f4 LR: 00007fff93b3d3f4 CTR: 0000000000000000 REGS: c0000003f1b07e80 TRAP: 3000 Not tainted (6.19.0-rc1-00048-gea1013c15392) MSR: 800000000280f033 <SF,VEC,VSX,EE,PR,FP,ME,IR,DR,RI,LE> CR: 48888208 XER: 00000000 <...> NIP [00007fff93b3d3f4] 0x7fff93b3d3f4 LR [00007fff93b3d3f4] 0x7fff93b3d3f4 ---- interrupt: 3000
The buggy address belongs to the object at c0000003c38e0000 which belongs to the cache pgtable-2^9 of size 4096 The buggy address is located 0 bytes inside of 4096-byte region [c0000003c38e0000, c0000003c38e1000)
The buggy address belongs to the physical page: page: refcount:0 mapcount:0 mapping:0000000000000000 index:0x0 pfn:0x3c38c head: order:2 mapcount:0 entire_mapcount:0 nr_pages_mapped:0 pincount:0 memcg:c0000003bfd63e01 flags: 0x63ffff800000040(head|node=6|zone=0|lastcpupid=0x7ffff) page_type: f5(slab) raw: 063ffff800000040 c000000140058980 5deadbeef0000122 0000000000000000 raw: 0000000000000000 0000000080200020 00000000f5000000 c0000003bfd63e01 head: 063ffff800000040 c000000140058980 5deadbeef0000122 0000000000000000 head: 0000000000000000 0000000080200020 00000000f5000000 c0000003bfd63e01 head: 063ffff800000002 c00c000000f0e301 00000000ffffffff 00000000ffffffff head: ffffffffffffffff 0000000000000000 00000000ffffffff 0000000000000004 page dumped because: kasan: bad access detected
[ 138.953636] [ T2164] Memory state around the buggy address: [ 138.953643] [ T2164] c0000003c38dff00: fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc [ 138.953652] [ T2164] c0000003c38dff80: fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc [ 138.953661] [ T2164] >c0000003c38e0000: fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc [ 138.953669] [ T2164] ^ [ 138.953675] [ T2164] c0000003c38e0080: fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc [ 138.953684] [ T2164] c0000003c38e0100: fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc [ 138.953692] [ T2164] ================================================================== [ 138.953701] [ T2164] Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint
Weakness: CWE-415
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-31686?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2026-31686?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Upgrade to the fixed version. These bugs are found with fuzzing and sanitisers and avoided by memory-safe languages. More about Use after free.
Is CVE-2026-31686 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-31686 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2026-31686, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-31686, GHSA-p63m-cmvw-gf7r, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2026-31686, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-12-CVE-2026-31686, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2204-CVE-2026-31686 and 2 more.