CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-98505

Low risk· EPSS 9%
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.20%

9th percentile - higher than 9% of all known CVEs

Summary

In the Linux kernel, damon_hugetlb_mkold() reads the page table entry into a local variable, unsets the accessed bit, and writes the updated value back. If hardware updates the same entry in parallel, hardware updates (e.g., dirty bits) may be lost. The fix uses huge_ptep_get_and_clear() to atomically clear the entry on read.

Risk Assessment

Loss of hardware updates (e.g., dirty bits) can lead to incorrect tracking of page state and potential errors in the DAMON and hugetlbfs subsystems. Although no critical consequences are expected, the bug can cause hard-to-diagnose issues.

Recommendation

Update the Linux kernel to a version containing the fix that uses huge_ptep_get_and_clear() in damon_hugetlb_mkold() to avoid parallel updates to page table entries.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

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Original NVD description (English source)

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/damon/vaddr: avoid hw-driven pte updates during damon_hugetlb_mkold() damon_hugetlb_mkold() reads the page table entry into a local variable, unsets the accessed bit in the variable, and updates the page table entry with the updated variable value. If hardware updates the same page table entry in parallel, the hw updates could be lost. For example, hardware-updated dirty bits might be lost. Avoid the parallel updates by clearing the page table entry when reading it together, using huge_ptep_get_and_clear(). If a parallel write to the memory is made after the clearing, the hw will see the page table entry is cleared, trigger page fault and wait until it is handled. The page fault handling will wait for damon_hugetlb_mkold() due to the page table lock. Because hugetlbfs is an in-memory file system and hugetlb pages cannot be reclaimed, no critical issue is expected to my best knowledge. But definitely this is a nasty bug that should be fixed sooner rather than later. The issue was discovered [1] by Sashiko.

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