HIGH Introduced in 6.6
powerpc Vmemmap Corruption
CVE-2026-89961
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
KernelScan AI7.8HIGH
01Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: powerpc/mm: fix wrong addr_pfn tracking in compound vmemmap population vmemmap_populate_compound_pages() uses addr_pfn to determine the PFN offset within a compound page and to decide whether the current vmemmap slot should be populated as a head page mapping or should reuse a tail page mapping. However, addr_pfn is advanced manually in parallel with addr. The loop itself progresses in vmemmap address space, so each PAGE_SIZE step in addr covers PAGE_SIZE / sizeof(struct page) struct page slots. Since addr_pfn is compared against nr_pages in data-PFN units, it should advance by the same number of PFNs. The existing manual increments do not match that and therefore do not reliably track the PFN corresponding to the current addr. As a result, pfn_offset can be computed from the wrong PFN and the code can make the head/tail decision for the wrong compound-page position. Fix this by deriving addr_pfn directly from the current vmemmap address instead of carrying it as loop state.
02KernelScan AI Analysis
Risk summary
A PFN tracking error in powerpc radix MMU vmemmap population for compound pages causes incorrect page table mappings for struct page metadata. This leads to kernel memory corruption when the kernel later accesses the wrongly-mapped pages. Systems running powerpc book3s64 with radix MMU and vmemmap deduplication enabled are affected; the bug can be triggered by local memory allocation paths such as huge page setup.
Vulnerability analysis
During population of the virtual memory map for compound pages on powerpc radix systems, a loop variable that tracks the current physical page frame number is incremented manually in step with the vmemmap address, but the increments do not match the actual PFN progression through vmemmap address space. This causes the code to compute an incorrect offset within the compound page and to make the wrong decision about whether a given vmemmap slot should map a head page or reuse a tail page mapping, resulting in page table entries that point to wrong physical memory. The fix removes the manual tracking entirely and instead derives the current PFN directly from the vmemmap address at each iteration, ensuring the head/tail decision is always made for the correct compound-page position. The vulnerable code path is reached on powerpc book3s64 systems with radix MMU when compound page vmemmap deduplication is active, triggered by local memory management operations such as huge page allocation or memory hotplug.
Lifecycle
03Fix Versions
| Branch | Introduced | Fixed in | Patch commit |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6.12 | 6.6 | 6.12.110 | e163c7184acf |
| 6.18 | 6.6 | 6.18.51 | 9c914b7a0bd1 |
| 6.6 | 6.6 | 6.6.157 | b96be860673f |
| 7.2 | 6.6 | 7.2.5 | 7968852a7ca3 |
| mainline | 6.6 | 7.3 | 89a4ae327641 |
| cip/6.12 | 6.6 | 6.12.111-cip32 | e163c7184acf |
04CIP Kernels
State of the newest release of each Civil Infrastructure Platform SLTS tree, from CIP's own fix records.
| CIP tree | State |
|---|---|
| cip/6.12 | Fixed in 6.12.111-cip32 |