CVE-2026-31456 mm/pagewalk: fix race between concurrent split and refault
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

mm/pagewalk: fix race between concurrent split and refault

The splitting of a PUD entry in walk_pud_range() can race with a
concurrent thread refaulting the PUD leaf entry causing it to try walking
a PMD range that has disappeared.

An example and reproduction of this is to try reading numa_maps of a
process while VFIO-PCI is setting up DMA (specifically the
vfio_pin_pages_remote call) on a large BAR for that process.

This will trigger a kernel BUG:
vfio-pci 0000:03:00.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: ffffa23980000000
PGD 0 P4D 0
Oops: Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP NOPTI
...
RIP: 0010:walk_pgd_range+0x3b5/0x7a0
Code: 8d 43 ff 48 89 44 24 28 4d 89 ce 4d 8d a7 00 00 20 00 48 8b 4c 24
28 49 81 e4 00 00 e0 ff 49 8d 44 24 ff 48 39 c8 4c 0f 43 e3 <49> f7 06
   9f ff ff ff 75 3b 48 8b 44 24 20 48 8b 40 28 48 85 c0 74
RSP: 0018:ffffac23e1ecf808 EFLAGS: 00010287
RAX: 00007f44c01fffff RBX: 00007f4500000000 RCX: 00007f44ffffffff
RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: 000ffffffffff000 RDI: ffffffff93378fe0
RBP: ffffac23e1ecf918 R08: 0000000000000004 R09: ffffa23980000000
R10: 0000000000000020 R11: 0000000000000004 R12: 00007f44c0200000
R13: 00007f44c0000000 R14: ffffa23980000000 R15: 00007f44c0000000
FS:  00007fe884739580(0000) GS:ffff9b7d7a9c0000(0000)
knlGS:0000000000000000
CS:  0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033
CR2: ffffa23980000000 CR3: 000000c0650e2005 CR4: 0000000000770ef0
PKRU: 55555554
Call Trace:
 <TASK>
 __walk_page_range+0x195/0x1b0
 walk_page_vma+0x62/0xc0
 show_numa_map+0x12b/0x3b0
 seq_read_iter+0x297/0x440
 seq_read+0x11d/0x140
 vfs_read+0xc2/0x340
 ksys_read+0x5f/0xe0
 do_syscall_64+0x68/0x130
 ? get_page_from_freelist+0x5c2/0x17e0
 ? mas_store_prealloc+0x17e/0x360
 ? vma_set_page_prot+0x4c/0xa0
 ? __alloc_pages_noprof+0x14e/0x2d0
 ? __mod_memcg_lruvec_state+0x8d/0x140
 ? __lruvec_stat_mod_folio+0x76/0xb0
 ? __folio_mod_stat+0x26/0x80
 ? do_anonymous_page+0x705/0x900
 ? __handle_mm_fault+0xa8d/0x1000
 ? __count_memcg_events+0x53/0xf0
 ? handle_mm_fault+0xa5/0x360
 ? do_user_addr_fault+0x342/0x640
 ? arch_exit_to_user_mode_prepare.constprop.0+0x16/0xa0
 ? irqentry_exit_to_user_mode+0x24/0x100
 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e
RIP: 0033:0x7fe88464f47e
Code: c0 e9 b6 fe ff ff 50 48 8d 3d be 07 0b 00 e8 69 01 02 00 66 0f 1f
84 00 00 00 00 00 64 8b 04 25 18 00 00 00 85 c0 75 14 0f 05 <48> 3d 00
   f0 ff ff 77 5a c3 66 0f 1f 84 00 00 00 00 00 48 83 ec 28
RSP: 002b:00007ffe6cd9a9b8 EFLAGS: 00000246 ORIG_RAX: 0000000000000000
RAX: ffffffffffffffda RBX: 0000000000020000 RCX: 00007fe88464f47e
RDX: 0000000000020000 RSI: 00007fe884543000 RDI: 0000000000000003
RBP: 00007fe884543000 R08: 00007fe884542010 R09: 0000000000000000
R10: fffffffffffffbc5 R11: 0000000000000246 R12: 0000000000000000
R13: 0000000000000003 R14: 0000000000020000 R15: 0000000000020000
 </TASK>

Fix this by validating the PUD entry in walk_pmd_range() using a stable
snapshot (pudp_get()).  If the PUD is not present or is a leaf, retry the
walk via ACTION_AGAIN instead of descending further.  This mirrors the
retry logic in walk_pte_range(), which lets walk_pmd_range() retry if the
PTE is not being got by pte_offset_map_lock().
Affected products: vendor: Linux
product: Linux
default_status: unaffected
vendor: Linux
product: Linux
default_status: affected
Published: 2026-04-22T13:53:49.568Z