CVE-2026-74481

mm/page_reporting: use system_freezable_wq to fix UAF during suspend

HIGH
7.8
CVSS Score
Published: August 15, 2026 at 12:27 PM UTC
Updated: October 16, 2026 at 08:17 PM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorLinux Kernel

Using Linux by Linux?

Get instant alerts when new vulnerabilities affect Linux - before attackers find them.

Real-time alertsTrack your software stackFree plan available
Severity
HIGH7.8
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.1%
SSVC
No known exploit

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/page_reporting: use system_freezable_wq to fix UAF during suspend During PM freeze (e.g. S3 suspend or S4 hibernation), device drivers like virtio_balloon reset their underlying virtio devices and delete their virtqueues via vdev->config->del_vqs(). However, page reporting work (page_reporting_process) was scheduled on the global system_wq. Because system_wq lacks the WQ_FREEZABLE flag, the PM freezer skips it, leaving page_reporting_process active during suspend. If pages are freed into the buddy allocator while suspending (for example, when core MM invokes the balloon shrinker during S4 hibernation image saving), page reporting triggers virtballoon_free_page_report() on deleted virtqueues, resulting in a Use-After-Free / General Protection Fault: [ 196.795226] general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xaa1436fe70dae6df: 0000 [#1] SMP NOPTI [ 196.825967] Workqueue: events page_reporting_process [ 196.831038] RIP: 0010:virtqueue_add_split+0x233/0x4c0 [virtio_ring] [ 196.927073] virtballoon_free_page_report+0x3a/0xe0 [virtio_balloon] [ 196.946943] page_reporting_process+0x370/0x4f0 Fix this by switching page reporting work to system_freezable_wq. This ensures that the PM freezer pauses page_reporting_process before device drivers destroy their reporting virtqueues. Because the reporting worker is frozen, memory reclamation/freeing (e.g. via shrinker execution) can safely return pages to MM during freeze without triggering unfrozen reporting work on deleted virtqueues. This aligns with the driver's existing design. The comment in virtballoon_freeze() states: /* * The workqueue is already frozen by the PM core before this * function is called. */ Testing: I have verified these fixes using Google’s virtualization infrastructure by running continuous suspend/resume iterations (40+ cycles) while churning memory using stress-ng (`stress-ng --vm 4 --vm-bytes 60% --timeout 1`) to constantly create free pages for the buddy allocator. We also set the `page_reporting_order` parameter to 0 to make the page reporting worker highly sensitive, forcing it to pick up any 4K free pages. This confirmed that the UAF crashes are no longer reproducible.

Affected

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

36e66c554b5c6a9d17a229faca7a61693527b0bd5.7
Vendor states this is fixed in 0b45f6927a14914ff685fe0e6f9d11232a1e03df (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 450f35f4d5a682a0796757e52295df58ddb63bc9 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 992f270fd808338fbae1f498a5e325e7e2e20368 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in a4c60046052777ca1dcc83fe3ece2a5136b301f1 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in b11907c905fa08eda925395f0724b7a409870f65 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in b2c094e98f8bb823b3ae475f7169fe2091c40c6d (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in f978048326570047e8216e81a67f9c71ef2bb1b1 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in faf439b5fa7b231120eac4f7a617e0bfd4f6f5c7 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 5.10.265 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 5.15.216 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 5.7 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 6.1.183 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 6.12.103 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 6.18.44 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 6.6.151 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 7.1.8 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 7.2 (unaffected)

Remediation

No guide yet

No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet, and no fixed version or vendor advisory is recorded against it.

SSVC — Action Prioritization

SSVCNo known exploitNot automatableTotal impact

SSVC signals action urgency (what to patch first), separate from CVSS which measures severity.

CVSS

7.8HIGHLinux
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusRECEIVED

Get alerted

Stop reading CVE feeds looking for your own stack

Track the products you run and VulnTracker tells you when a new CVE affects them — with what is known about fixing it, and nothing about the rest.

Free plan, no card