CVE Catalog

CVE-2024-36881

MediumCVSS 5.5
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.24%

15th percentile - higher than 15% of all known CVEs

Summary

In the Linux kernel, userfaultfd did not reset write-protect bits in page tables on close(), only on explicit UFFDIO_UNREGISTER ioctl. The fix covers close() as well, resolving a WARN trace. Leftover bits may be observable but are described as harmless.

Risk Assessment

May cause memory management inconsistencies and false alarms in page table checking mechanisms, potentially complicating debugging and diagnostics.

Recommendation

Update the Linux kernel to a version containing the fix. Monitor systems for warnings related to userfaultfd and page_table_check.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

See all
Original NVD description (English source)

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/userfaultfd: reset ptes when close() for wr-protected ones Userfaultfd unregister includes a step to remove wr-protect bits from all the relevant pgtable entries, but that only covered an explicit UFFDIO_UNREGISTER ioctl, not a close() on the userfaultfd itself. Cover that too. This fixes a WARN trace. The only user visible side effect is the user can observe leftover wr-protect bits even if the user close()ed on an userfaultfd when releasing the last reference of it. However hopefully that should be harmless, and nothing bad should happen even if so. This change is now more important after the recent page-table-check patch we merged in mm-unstable (446dd9ad37d0 ("mm/page_table_check: support userfault wr-protect entries")), as we'll do sanity check on uffd-wp bits without vma context. So it's better if we can 100% guarantee no uffd-wp bit leftovers, to make sure each report will be valid.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS