CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-93197

Unknown
Published: Translated: NVD NIST

Summary

A bug in the Linux kernel's memcg subsystem causes LRU size accounting to be copied to the parent instead of moved when a memory cgroup is offlined, leaving stale counters on the child. This makes the LRU (or MGLRU) scanner read phantom sizes and grind through empty lists on dying cgroups, over-budgeting limits and wasting CPU. On one host, counters described 476 GiB of pages—1.89x the machine's RAM.

Risk Assessment

Organizations may experience excessive CPU consumption from futile LRU scanning on dead cgroups and incorrect memory management decisions due to inflated counters. This can degrade performance and, in extreme cases, disrupt memory reclaim behavior.

Recommendation

Update the Linux kernel to a version containing the fix for CVE-2026-93197, noting it depends on prior commit bf4ade7dbd76 ("memcg: keep folio's objcg same as its node") and must not be backported ahead of it. After updating, verify system stability and CPU usage on hosts with heavy memory cgroup usage.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

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Original NVD description (English source)

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: memcg: move LRU size accounting on reparenting instead of copying it When a memory cgroup is offlined its LRU folios are reparented to the parent. lruvec_reparent_lru() splices the child's lists into the parent's and credits the parent with the child's per-zone lru_zone_size[], but never clears the child's copy, so the size is copied rather than moved. lru_gen_reparent_memcg() does the same for MGLRU. The parent is left correct, credited with exactly the folios it took over. The stale value sits on the child and nothing will correct it: folio->memcg_data now resolves to the parent, so every later update_lru_size() for those folios goes there. Dying cgroups are not freed immediately and mem_cgroup_iter() still walks them, so shrink_lruvec() keeps being called on them. get_scan_count() reads the phantom counter through lruvec_lru_size() and the scan loop then grinds through nr[] in SWAP_CLUSTER_MAX steps against an empty list, for as long as the dead cgroup lives. Under MGLRU the MGLRU scanner runs instead, but count_shadow_nodes() sums all of NR_LRU_LISTS through lruvec_lru_size() and over-budgets the shadow node limit just the same. On one 251 GiB host a sweep of every mz->lru_zone_size[] found 380 counters describing folios on no list at all: 124777314 pages, 476 GiB, 1.89x the machine's RAM, across 57 cgroups. All were on memcgs with CSS_DYING set and CSS_ONLINE clear, and parent/child pairs reported byte-identical sizes. LRU_UNEVICTABLE needs its size moved too. Its list is deliberately not spliced because lruvec_init() poisons the head - the unevictable LRU is imaginary and folios are never threaded on it - but the size is kept by lruvec_add_folio()/lruvec_del_folio() and those folios account to the parent from here on. This depends on commit bf4ade7dbd76 ("memcg: keep folio's objcg same as its node") and must not be backported ahead of it. Without that invariant a folio's objcg can belong to another node, so a folio already spliced onto the parent's list can still resolve to the child's lruvec until the objcg's node is reparented in a later iteration of memcg_reparent_objcgs(); clearing the child's counter early then lets lruvec_del_folio() underflow it and trip the WARN_ONCE()/VM_BUG_ON() in mem_cgroup_update_lru_size().

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