Message-ID: <2025102212-CVE-2023-53706-18d9@gregkh>
Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2025 15:24:45 +0200
From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
To: linux-cve-announce@...r.kernel.org
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...nel.org>
Subject: CVE-2023-53706: mm/vmemmap/devdax: fix kernel crash when probing devdax devices

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

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

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

mm/vmemmap/devdax: fix kernel crash when probing devdax devices

commit 4917f55b4ef9 ("mm/sparse-vmemmap: improve memory savings for
compound devmaps") added support for using optimized vmmemap for devdax
devices.  But how vmemmap mappings are created are architecture specific. 
For example, powerpc with hash translation doesn't have vmemmap mappings
in init_mm page table instead they are bolted table entries in the
hardware page table

vmemmap_populate_compound_pages() used by vmemmap optimization code is not
aware of these architecture-specific mapping.  Hence allow architecture to
opt for this feature.  I selected architectures supporting
HUGETLB_PAGE_OPTIMIZE_VMEMMAP option as also supporting this feature.

This patch fixes the below crash on ppc64.

BUG: Unable to handle kernel data access on write at 0xc00c000100400038
Faulting instruction address: 0xc000000001269d90
Oops: Kernel access of bad area, sig: 11 [#1]
LE PAGE_SIZE=64K MMU=Hash SMP NR_CPUS=2048 NUMA pSeries
Modules linked in:
CPU: 7 PID: 1 Comm: swapper/0 Not tainted 6.3.0-rc5-150500.34-default+ #2 5c90a668b6bbd142599890245c2fb5de19d7d28a
Hardware name: IBM,9009-42G POWER9 (raw) 0x4e0202 0xf000005 of:IBM,FW950.40 (VL950_099) hv:phyp pSeries
NIP:  c000000001269d90 LR: c0000000004c57d4 CTR: 0000000000000000
REGS: c000000003632c30 TRAP: 0300   Not tainted  (6.3.0-rc5-150500.34-default+)
MSR:  8000000000009033 <SF,EE,ME,IR,DR,RI,LE>  CR: 24842228  XER: 00000000
CFAR: c0000000004c57d0 DAR: c00c000100400038 DSISR: 42000000 IRQMASK: 0
....
NIP [c000000001269d90] __init_single_page.isra.74+0x14/0x4c
LR [c0000000004c57d4] __init_zone_device_page+0x44/0xd0
Call Trace:
[c000000003632ed0] [c000000003632f60] 0xc000000003632f60 (unreliable)
[c000000003632f10] [c0000000004c5ca0] memmap_init_zone_device+0x170/0x250
[c000000003632fe0] [c0000000005575f8] memremap_pages+0x2c8/0x7f0
[c0000000036330c0] [c000000000557b5c] devm_memremap_pages+0x3c/0xa0
[c000000003633100] [c000000000d458a8] dev_dax_probe+0x108/0x3e0
[c0000000036331a0] [c000000000d41430] dax_bus_probe+0xb0/0x140
[c0000000036331d0] [c000000000cef27c] really_probe+0x19c/0x520
[c000000003633260] [c000000000cef6b4] __driver_probe_device+0xb4/0x230
[c0000000036332e0] [c000000000cef888] driver_probe_device+0x58/0x120
[c000000003633320] [c000000000cefa6c] __device_attach_driver+0x11c/0x1e0
[c0000000036333a0] [c000000000cebc58] bus_for_each_drv+0xa8/0x130
[c000000003633400] [c000000000ceefcc] __device_attach+0x15c/0x250
[c0000000036334a0] [c000000000ced458] bus_probe_device+0x108/0x110
[c0000000036334f0] [c000000000ce92dc] device_add+0x7fc/0xa10
[c0000000036335b0] [c000000000d447c8] devm_create_dev_dax+0x1d8/0x530
[c000000003633640] [c000000000d46b60] __dax_pmem_probe+0x200/0x270
[c0000000036337b0] [c000000000d46bf0] dax_pmem_probe+0x20/0x70
[c0000000036337d0] [c000000000d2279c] nvdimm_bus_probe+0xac/0x2b0
[c000000003633860] [c000000000cef27c] really_probe+0x19c/0x520
[c0000000036338f0] [c000000000cef6b4] __driver_probe_device+0xb4/0x230
[c000000003633970] [c000000000cef888] driver_probe_device+0x58/0x120
[c0000000036339b0] [c000000000cefd08] __driver_attach+0x1d8/0x240
[c000000003633a30] [c000000000cebb04] bus_for_each_dev+0xb4/0x130
[c000000003633a90] [c000000000cee564] driver_attach+0x34/0x50
[c000000003633ab0] [c000000000ced878] bus_add_driver+0x218/0x300
[c000000003633b40] [c000000000cf1144] driver_register+0xa4/0x1b0
[c000000003633bb0] [c000000000d21a0c] __nd_driver_register+0x5c/0x100
[c000000003633c10] [c00000000206a2e8] dax_pmem_init+0x34/0x48
[c000000003633c30] [c0000000000132d0] do_one_initcall+0x60/0x320
[c000000003633d00] [c0000000020051b0] kernel_init_freeable+0x360/0x400
[c000000003633de0] [c000000000013764] kernel_init+0x34/0x1d0
[c000000003633e50] [c00000000000de14] ret_from_kernel_thread+0x5c/0x64

The Linux kernel CVE team has assigned CVE-2023-53706 to this issue.


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

	Issue introduced in 5.19 with commit 4917f55b4ef963e2d2288fe4eb651728be8db406 and fixed in 6.3.5 with commit 8f4603588acf5807aa1f1b4b1ea2b0365acd71f0
	Issue introduced in 5.19 with commit 4917f55b4ef963e2d2288fe4eb651728be8db406 and fixed in 6.4 with commit 87a7ae75d7383afa998f57656d1d14e2a730cc47

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-2023-53706
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:
	include/linux/mm.h
	mm/mm_init.c
	mm/sparse-vmemmap.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/8f4603588acf5807aa1f1b4b1ea2b0365acd71f0
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/87a7ae75d7383afa998f57656d1d14e2a730cc47

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