linux-cve-announce - CVE-2025-39903: of_numa: fix uninitialized memory nodes causing kernel panic

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Message-ID: <2025100118-CVE-2025-39903-6698@gregkh>
Date: Wed,  1 Oct 2025 09:43:27 +0200
From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
To: linux-cve-announce@...r.kernel.org
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...nel.org>
Subject: CVE-2025-39903: of_numa: fix uninitialized memory nodes causing kernel panic

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

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

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

of_numa: fix uninitialized memory nodes causing kernel panic

When there are memory-only nodes (nodes without CPUs), these nodes are not
properly initialized, causing kernel panic during boot.

of_numa_init
	of_numa_parse_cpu_nodes
		node_set(nid, numa_nodes_parsed);
	of_numa_parse_memory_nodes

In of_numa_parse_cpu_nodes, numa_nodes_parsed gets updated only for nodes
containing CPUs.  Memory-only nodes should have been updated in
of_numa_parse_memory_nodes, but they weren't.

Subsequently, when free_area_init() attempts to access NODE_DATA() for
these uninitialized memory nodes, the kernel panics due to NULL pointer
dereference.

This can be reproduced on ARM64 QEMU with 1 CPU and 2 memory nodes:

qemu-system-aarch64 \
-cpu host -nographic \
-m 4G -smp 1 \
-machine virt,accel=kvm,gic-version=3,iommu=smmuv3 \
-object memory-backend-ram,size=2G,id=mem0 \
-object memory-backend-ram,size=2G,id=mem1 \
-numa node,nodeid=0,memdev=mem0 \
-numa node,nodeid=1,memdev=mem1 \
-kernel $IMAGE \
-hda $DISK \
-append "console=ttyAMA0 root=/dev/vda rw earlycon"

[    0.000000] Booting Linux on physical CPU 0x0000000000 [0x481fd010]
[    0.000000] Linux version 6.17.0-rc1-00001-gabb4b3daf18c-dirty (yintirui@...al) (gcc (GCC) 12.3.1, GNU ld (GNU Binutils) 2.41) #52 SMP PREEMPT Mon Aug 18 09:49:40 CST 2025
[    0.000000] KASLR enabled
[    0.000000] random: crng init done
[    0.000000] Machine model: linux,dummy-virt
[    0.000000] efi: UEFI not found.
[    0.000000] earlycon: pl11 at MMIO 0x0000000009000000 (options '')
[    0.000000] printk: legacy bootconsole [pl11] enabled
[    0.000000] OF: reserved mem: Reserved memory: No reserved-memory node in the DT
[    0.000000] NODE_DATA(0) allocated [mem 0xbfffd9c0-0xbfffffff]
[    0.000000] node 1 must be removed before remove section 23
[    0.000000] Zone ranges:
[    0.000000]   DMA      [mem 0x0000000040000000-0x00000000ffffffff]
[    0.000000]   DMA32    empty
[    0.000000]   Normal   [mem 0x0000000100000000-0x000000013fffffff]
[    0.000000] Movable zone start for each node
[    0.000000] Early memory node ranges
[    0.000000]   node   0: [mem 0x0000000040000000-0x00000000bfffffff]
[    0.000000]   node   1: [mem 0x00000000c0000000-0x000000013fffffff]
[    0.000000] Initmem setup node 0 [mem 0x0000000040000000-0x00000000bfffffff]
[    0.000000] Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 00000000000000a0
[    0.000000] Mem abort info:
[    0.000000]   ESR = 0x0000000096000004
[    0.000000]   EC = 0x25: DABT (current EL), IL = 32 bits
[    0.000000]   SET = 0, FnV = 0
[    0.000000]   EA = 0, S1PTW = 0
[    0.000000]   FSC = 0x04: level 0 translation fault
[    0.000000] Data abort info:
[    0.000000]   ISV = 0, ISS = 0x00000004, ISS2 = 0x00000000
[    0.000000]   CM = 0, WnR = 0, TnD = 0, TagAccess = 0
[    0.000000]   GCS = 0, Overlay = 0, DirtyBit = 0, Xs = 0
[    0.000000] [00000000000000a0] user address but active_mm is swapper
[    0.000000] Internal error: Oops: 0000000096000004 [#1]  SMP
[    0.000000] Modules linked in:
[    0.000000] CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 0 Comm: swapper Not tainted 6.17.0-rc1-00001-g760c6dabf762-dirty #54 PREEMPT
[    0.000000] Hardware name: linux,dummy-virt (DT)
[    0.000000] pstate: 800000c5 (Nzcv daIF -PAN -UAO -TCO -DIT -SSBS BTYPE=--)
[    0.000000] pc : free_area_init+0x50c/0xf9c
[    0.000000] lr : free_area_init+0x5c0/0xf9c
[    0.000000] sp : ffffa02ca0f33c00
[    0.000000] x29: ffffa02ca0f33cb0 x28: 0000000000000000 x27: 0000000000000000
[    0.000000] x26: 4ec4ec4ec4ec4ec5 x25: 00000000000c0000 x24: 00000000000c0000
[    0.000000] x23: 0000000000040000 x22: 0000000000000000 x21: ffffa02ca0f3b368
[    0.000000] x20: ffffa02ca14c7b98 x19: 0000000000000000 x18: 0000000000000002
[    0.000000] x17: 000000000000cacc x16: 0000000000000001 x15: 0000000000000001
[    0.000000] x14: 0000000080000000 x13: 0000000000000018 x12: 0000000000000002
[    0.000000] x11: ffffa02ca0fd4f00 x10: ffffa02ca14bab20 x9 : ffffa02ca14bab38
[    0.000000] x8 : 00000000000c0000 x7 : 0000000000000001 x6 : 0000000000000002
[    0.000000] x5 : 0000000140000000 x4 : ffffa02ca0f33c90 x3 : ffffa02ca0f33ca0
[    0.000000] x2 : ffffa02ca0f33c98 x1 : 0000000080000000 x0 : 0000000000000001
[    0.000000] Call trace:
[    0.000000]  free_area_init+0x50c/0xf9c (P)
[    0.000000]  bootmem_init+0x110/0x1dc
[    0.000000]  setup_arch+0x278/0x60c
[    0.000000]  start_kernel+0x70/0x748
[    0.000000]  __primary_switched+0x88/0x90
[    0.000000] Code: d503201f b98093e0 52800016 f8607a93 (f9405260)
[    0.000000] ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]---
[    0.000000] Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill the idle task!
[    0.000000] ---[ end Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill the idle task! ]---

The Linux kernel CVE team has assigned CVE-2025-39903 to this issue.


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

	Issue introduced in 6.12 with commit 767507654c22578ea0b51d181211b2e7714ea7cd and fixed in 6.12.46 with commit c2daa6eb4740720b5bd0e06267d7c93a3eed844e
	Issue introduced in 6.12 with commit 767507654c22578ea0b51d181211b2e7714ea7cd and fixed in 6.16.6 with commit f3286ad8eeae15fd4bd5c12f9adfe888b26baf62
	Issue introduced in 6.12 with commit 767507654c22578ea0b51d181211b2e7714ea7cd and fixed in 6.17 with commit ee4d098cbc9160f573b5c1b5a51d6158efdb2896

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-2025-39903
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:
	drivers/of/of_numa.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/c2daa6eb4740720b5bd0e06267d7c93a3eed844e
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f3286ad8eeae15fd4bd5c12f9adfe888b26baf62
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ee4d098cbc9160f573b5c1b5a51d6158efdb2896