Message-ID: <2025070933-CVE-2025-38242-8f85@gregkh>
Date: Wed,  9 Jul 2025 12:42:34 +0200
From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
To: linux-cve-announce@...r.kernel.org
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...nel.org>
Subject: CVE-2025-38242: mm: userfaultfd: fix race of userfaultfd_move and swap cache

From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...nel.org>

Description
===========

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

mm: userfaultfd: fix race of userfaultfd_move and swap cache

This commit fixes two kinds of races, they may have different results:

Barry reported a BUG_ON in commit c50f8e6053b0, we may see the same
BUG_ON if the filemap lookup returned NULL and folio is added to swap
cache after that.

If another kind of race is triggered (folio changed after lookup) we
may see RSS counter is corrupted:

[  406.893936] BUG: Bad rss-counter state mm:ffff0000c5a9ddc0
type:MM_ANONPAGES val:-1
[  406.894071] BUG: Bad rss-counter state mm:ffff0000c5a9ddc0
type:MM_SHMEMPAGES val:1

Because the folio is being accounted to the wrong VMA.

I'm not sure if there will be any data corruption though, seems no. 
The issues above are critical already.


On seeing a swap entry PTE, userfaultfd_move does a lockless swap cache
lookup, and tries to move the found folio to the faulting vma.  Currently,
it relies on checking the PTE value to ensure that the moved folio still
belongs to the src swap entry and that no new folio has been added to the
swap cache, which turns out to be unreliable.

While working and reviewing the swap table series with Barry, following
existing races are observed and reproduced [1]:

In the example below, move_pages_pte is moving src_pte to dst_pte, where
src_pte is a swap entry PTE holding swap entry S1, and S1 is not in the
swap cache:

CPU1                               CPU2
userfaultfd_move
  move_pages_pte()
    entry = pte_to_swp_entry(orig_src_pte);
    // Here it got entry = S1
    ... < interrupted> ...
                                   <swapin src_pte, alloc and use folio A>
                                   // folio A is a new allocated folio
                                   // and get installed into src_pte
                                   <frees swap entry S1>
                                   // src_pte now points to folio A, S1
                                   // has swap count == 0, it can be freed
                                   // by folio_swap_swap or swap
                                   // allocator's reclaim.
                                   <try to swap out another folio B>
                                   // folio B is a folio in another VMA.
                                   <put folio B to swap cache using S1 >
                                   // S1 is freed, folio B can use it
                                   // for swap out with no problem.
                                   ...
    folio = filemap_get_folio(S1)
    // Got folio B here !!!
    ... < interrupted again> ...
                                   <swapin folio B and free S1>
                                   // Now S1 is free to be used again.
                                   <swapout src_pte & folio A using S1>
                                   // Now src_pte is a swap entry PTE
                                   // holding S1 again.
    folio_trylock(folio)
    move_swap_pte
      double_pt_lock
      is_pte_pages_stable
      // Check passed because src_pte == S1
      folio_move_anon_rmap(...)
      // Moved invalid folio B here !!!

The race window is very short and requires multiple collisions of multiple
rare events, so it's very unlikely to happen, but with a deliberately
constructed reproducer and increased time window, it can be reproduced
easily.

This can be fixed by checking if the folio returned by filemap is the
valid swap cache folio after acquiring the folio lock.

Another similar race is possible: filemap_get_folio may return NULL, but
folio (A) could be swapped in and then swapped out again using the same
swap entry after the lookup.  In such a case, folio (A) may remain in the
swap cache, so it must be moved too:

CPU1                               CPU2
userfaultfd_move
  move_pages_pte()
    entry = pte_to_swp_entry(orig_src_pte);
    // Here it got entry = S1, and S1 is not in swap cache
    folio = filemap_get_folio(S1)
    // Got NULL
    ... < interrupted again> ...
                                   <swapin folio A and free S1>
                                   <swapout folio A re-using S1>
    move_swap_pte
      double_pt_lock
      is_pte_pages_stable
      // Check passed because src_pte == S1
      folio_move_anon_rmap(...)
      // folio A is ignored !!!

Fix this by checking the swap cache again after acquiring the src_pte
lock.  And to avoid the filemap overhead, we check swap_map directly [2].

The SWP_SYNCHRONOUS_IO path does make the problem more complex, but so far
we don't need to worry about that, since folios can only be exposed to the
swap cache in the swap out path, and this is covered in this patch by
checking the swap cache again after acquiring the src_pte lock.

Testing with a simple C program that allocates and moves several GB of
memory did not show any observable performance change.

The Linux kernel CVE team has assigned CVE-2025-38242 to this issue.


Affected and fixed versions
===========================

	Issue introduced in 6.8 with commit adef440691bab824e39c1b17382322d195e1fab0 and fixed in 6.15.5 with commit db2ca8074955ca64187a4fb596dd290b9c446cd3
	Issue introduced in 6.8 with commit adef440691bab824e39c1b17382322d195e1fab0 and fixed in 6.16-rc4 with commit 0ea148a799198518d8ebab63ddd0bb6114a103bc

Please see https://www.kernel.org for a full list of currently supported
kernel versions by the kernel community.

Unaffected versions might change over time as fixes are backported to
older supported kernel versions.  The official CVE entry at
	https://cve.org/CVERecord/?id=CVE-2025-38242
will be updated if fixes are backported, please check that for the most
up to date information about this issue.


Affected files
==============

The file(s) affected by this issue are:
	mm/userfaultfd.c


Mitigation
==========

The Linux kernel CVE team recommends that you update to the latest
stable kernel version for this, and many other bugfixes.  Individual
changes are never tested alone, but rather are part of a larger kernel
release.  Cherry-picking individual commits is not recommended or
supported by the Linux kernel community at all.  If however, updating to
the latest release is impossible, the individual changes to resolve this
issue can be found at these commits:
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/db2ca8074955ca64187a4fb596dd290b9c446cd3
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0ea148a799198518d8ebab63ddd0bb6114a103bc

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