CVE-2024-26630: mm: cachestat: fix folio read-after-free in cache walk

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2024-26630 is a high (CVSS 7.1) Use After Free vulnerability in linux. EPSS estimates a 0.30% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 23.2% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 13-03-2024
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 05-08-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm: cachestat: fix folio read-after-free in cache walk In cachestat, we access the folio from the page cache's xarray to compute its page offset, and check for its dirty and writeback flags. However, we do not hold a reference to the folio before performing these actions, which means the folio can concurrently be released and reused as another folio/page/slab. Get around this altogether by just using xarray's existing machinery for the folio page offsets and dirty/writeback states. This changes behavior for tmpfs files to now always report zeroes in their dirty and writeback counters. This is okay as tmpfs doesn't follow conventional writeback cache behavior: its pages get "cleaned" during swapout, after which they're no longer resident etc.

• CWE-416Use After FreeThe product reuses or references memory after it has been freed. At some point afterward, the memory may be allocated again and saved in another pointer, while the original pointer references a location somewhere within the new allocation. Any operations using the original pointer are no longer valid because the memory "belongs" to the code that operates on the new pointer.