CVE-2026-43258

alpha: fix user-space corruption during memory compaction

HIGH
7.8
CVSS Score
Published: May 6, 2026 at 11:28 AM UTC
Updated: October 30, 2026 at 01:18 PM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorLinux Kernel

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Severity
HIGH7.8
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.2%

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: alpha: fix user-space corruption during memory compaction Alpha systems can suffer sporadic user-space crashes and heap corruption when memory compaction is enabled. Symptoms include SIGSEGV, glibc allocator failures (e.g. "unaligned tcache chunk"), and compiler internal errors. The failures disappear when compaction is disabled or when using global TLB invalidation. The root cause is insufficient TLB shootdown during page migration. Alpha relies on ASN-based MM context rollover for instruction cache coherency, but this alone is not sufficient to prevent stale data or instruction translations from surviving migration. Fix this by introducing a migration-specific helper that combines: - MM context invalidation (ASN rollover), - immediate per-CPU TLB invalidation (TBI), - synchronous cross-CPU shootdown when required. The helper is used only by migration/compaction paths to avoid changing global TLB semantics. Additionally, update flush_tlb_other(), pte_clear(), to use READ_ONCE()/WRITE_ONCE() for correct SMP memory ordering. This fixes observed crashes on both UP and SMP Alpha systems.

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

2.6.16.1 ≤ v < 6.12.756.13 ≤ v < 6.18.166.19 ≤ v < 6.19.62.6.162.6.16 rc22.6.16 rc32.6.16 rc42.6.16 rc52.6.16 rc62.6.16 rc7a48d07afdf18212de22b959715b16793c5a6e57a
Vendor states this is fixed in 03e42b5f7ad4c2c3db8bd384bab7990d5d53c90f (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in bab8d762a8dbb816b10011e13b87d1bca91e5f77 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in d4ca6ca2c6f5a1d19d9014c5b36d96637846b5d6 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in dd5712f3379cfe760267cdd28ff957d9ab4e51c7 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 2.6.16 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 6.12.75 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 6.18.16 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 6.19.6 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 6.6.160 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 7.0 (unaffected)

CVSS

7.8HIGHLinux
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusMODIFIED
CWE
CWE-787

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