# CVE-2026-93243: mm/secretmem: properly account locked pages

> A local attacker can exhaust system memory by bypassing memory lock limits in the Linux kernel secretmem subsystem, causing system instability.

- **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:** 24 Sep 2026
- **Updated:** 21 Oct 2026
- **Also known as:** AZL-103787, BELL-CVE-2026-93243, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-93243, GHSA-9q86-wxfp-682m, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-93243

## What is CVE-2026-93243?

CVE-2026-93243 is a denial of service vulnerability in Linux, published on 24 Sep 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/secretmem: properly account locked pages

secretmem accounts folios by treating memory as if it were mlock()'d and
thus limited by the RLIMIT_MEMLOCK limit.

However the folios are unevictable and remain so until the inode is
evicted, eliminating usual mlock() semantics - mapping folios then
unmapping them does not clear their unevictable state, since it depends on
AS_UNEVICTABLE, not PG_mlocked.

A user can therefore easily work around the RLIMIT_MEMLOCK limit - simply
map then unmap and VmLck no longer counts the secretmem range.  Worse,
folios are not accounted in the process's RSS, meaning the OOM killer
won't know to kill the process.

Repeatedly mapping/unmapping (or forking) can then result in the
consumption of all available system memory with unevictable folios and
cause system instability.

A secretmem fd can be passed between processes and over fork so a
per-process limit simply does not make sense, so follow the precedent set
by io_uring, perf, skbuff, iommufd and xdp by tracking the number of
locked pages in user_struct->locked_vm.

Since the scope tracked is actually inode lifetime, the RLIMIT_MEMLOCK
applies per-user not per-process, so it doesn't make sense to bypass for
users with CAP_IPC_LOCK, therefore remove this bypass.

There is simply no reason to carry on marking the mapping as mlock()'d
since it's misleading and the lifecycle is now correctly handled, so
remove this too.

Note that secretmem does not support any form of truncation (including
hole punching) and the folios are unreclaimable, so the folios need only
be accounted on fault and unaccounted on inode destruction.

__secretmem_account_pages() is more or less a duplicate of the code that
io_uring etc.  use, but since this is a bug fix that needs backporting,
defer any de-duplication efforts to a follow-up.

test_mlock_limit() asserts mlock_future_ok() on mmap(), however this has
been removed, so remove the test altogether for the fix.  A new test will
be sent separately for upstream.

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-93243?


## How do I fix CVE-2026-93243?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2026-93243 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-93243 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2026-93243 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2026-93243 is a denial of service vulnerability in Linux, published on 24 Sep 2026. 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-2026-93243 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-2026-93243/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-93243/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-93243
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-93243
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2026-93243

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-93243/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.