CVE-2026-89483 nvme: zero the discard fallback page
An attacker with local access under memory pressure could read uninitialized kernel memory via NVMe discard operations, potentially leaking sensitive data.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-89483?
CVE-2026-89483 is a high-severity vulnerability in Linux, published on 11 Sep 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Official description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
nvme: zero the discard fallback page
nvme_setup_discard() always maps sizeof(struct nvme_dsm_range) * NVME_DSM_MAX_RANGES = 4096 bytes as the DSM payload however many ranges the command declares, because some devices ignore the 'Number of Ranges' field - the Fixes: commit records two that read past the declared ranges. A single-range discard fills only the first 16 bytes.
Normally the buffer comes from kzalloc() and the other 4080 bytes are zero. When that allocation fails the code falls back to the per-controller ctrl->discard_page, which nvme_init_ctrl() obtains with alloc_page(GFP_KERNEL) and nothing ever zeroes, so those 4080 bytes are whatever the page last held and are handed to the controller. Reaching it requires the kzalloc(GFP_ATOMIC | __GFP_NOWARN) to fail, that is memory pressure; it is not remotely triggerable. Failing the allocation under KMSAN reproduces it, with the leaked tail full of vmemmap struct page pointers. The extent in the report is a partial transfer of the payload, not the whole 4096 bytes; the 16-byte boundary in it is the one declared range:
[ 11.991601] BUG: KMSAN: uninit-value in dma_map_phys+0x14c8/0x1900 [ 11.991969] dma_map_phys+0x14c8/0x1900 [ 11.992220] dma_map_page_attrs+0xcf/0x130 [ 11.992485] e1000_xmit_frame+0x4099/0x6d10 [ 11.992768] dev_hard_start_xmit+0x22f/0xa80 [ 11.993068] sch_direct_xmit+0x35c/0xcb0 [ 11.993315] __dev_queue_xmit+0x1ee5/0x5eb0 [ 11.993608] ip_finish_output2+0x1903/0x1c30 [ 11.993881] ip_finish_output+0x288/0x870 [ 11.994125] ip_output+0x15e/0x400 [ 11.994365] __ip_queue_xmit+0x1e85/0x1fb0 [ 11.994639] ip_queue_xmit+0x60/0x80 [ 11.994899] __tcp_transmit_skb+0x4e71/0x5fa0 [ 11.995210] tcp_write_xmit+0x3a36/0x9160 [ 11.995533] __tcp_push_pending_frames+0xc5/0x3c0 [ 11.995854] tcp_push+0x7dc/0x840 [ 11.996076] tcp_sendmsg_locked+0x766c/0x8400 [ 11.996371] tcp_sendmsg+0x4b/0x90 [ 11.996572] inet_sendmsg+0x134/0x2a0 [ 11.996823] __sock_sendmsg+0x265/0x360 [ 11.997076] sock_sendmsg+0x100/0x1e0 [ 11.997293] nvme_tcp_try_send+0x196f/0x6370 [ 11.997605] nvme_tcp_queue_rq+0x1d54/0x20b0 [ 11.997882] blk_mq_dispatch_rq_list+0x5ee/0x2e50 [ 11.998175] __blk_mq_sched_dispatch_requests+0x16dc/0x24a0 [ 11.998539] blk_mq_sched_dispatch_requests+0x11b/0x2c0 [ 11.998865] blk_mq_run_work_fn+0x13b/0x280 [ 11.999146] process_scheduled_works+0x966/0x1ad0 [ 11.999465] worker_thread+0xe44/0x1480 [ 11.999709] kthread+0x53b/0x600 [ 11.999927] ret_from_fork+0x29f/0x7c0 [ 12.000191] ret_from_fork_asm+0x1a/0x30 [ 12.000460] [ 12.000558] Uninit was created at: [ 12.000788] __alloc_frozen_pages_noprof+0x8bf/0xd30 [ 12.001096] alloc_pages_mpol+0x1d0/0x5f0 [ 12.001326] alloc_pages_noprof+0x102/0x290 [ 12.001627] nvme_init_ctrl+0x5a3/0x9f0 [ 12.001891] nvme_tcp_create_ctrl+0xd75/0x19b0 [ 12.002170] nvmf_dev_write+0x4c68/0x4fd0 [ 12.002426] vfs_write+0x587/0x1a10 [ 12.002636] __x64_sys_write+0x207/0x4f0 [ 12.002874] x64_sys_call+0x2ff0/0x3ea0 [ 12.003123] do_syscall_64+0x147/0x3b0 [ 12.003400] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x77/0x7f [ 12.003680] [ 12.003777] Bytes 16-2843 of 2844 are uninitialized [ 12.004068] Memory access of size 2844 starts at ffff888109f82000 [ 12.004412] [ 12.004530] CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 101 Comm: kworker/0:1H Not tainted 7.2.0-rc5-NVMECTL-gf5098b6bae76 #1 PREEMPT(lazy) [ 12.005127] Hardware name: QEMU Ubuntu 24.04 PC v2 (i440FX + PIIX, arch_caps fix, 1996), BIOS 1.16.3-debian-1.16.3-2 04/01/2014 [ 12.005762] Workqueue: kblockd blk_mq_run_work_fn [ 12.006073] =====================================================
Allocate the page with __GFP_ZERO. The single allocation site covers every use of it: bytes no discard has written stay zero, and bytes one did write hold that controller's own range list, which it has already been sent.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-89483?
How do I fix CVE-2026-89483?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Is CVE-2026-89483 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-89483 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as AZL-100226, BELL-CVE-2026-89483, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-89483, GHSA-q8w5-3xh9-8fxf, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-89483.