CVE-2025-22015: linux NULL Pointer Dereference

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2025-22015 is a high (CVSS 7.8) NULL Pointer Dereference vulnerability in linux. EPSS estimates a 0.21% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 11% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 08-04-2025
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 15-10-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/migrate: fix shmem xarray update during migration A shmem folio can be either in page cache or in swap cache, but not at the same time. Namely, once it is in swap cache, folio->mapping should be NULL, and the folio is no longer in a shmem mapping. In __folio_migrate_mapping(), to determine the number of xarray entries to update, folio_test_swapbacked() is used, but that conflates shmem in page cache case and shmem in swap cache case. It leads to xarray multi-index entry corruption, since it turns a sibling entry to a normal entry during xas_store() (see [1] for a userspace reproduction). Fix it by only using folio_test_swapcache() to determine whether xarray is storing swap cache entries or not to choose the right number of xarray entries to update. [1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/Z8idPCkaJW1IChjT@casper.infradead.org/ Note: In __split_huge_page(), folio_test_anon() && folio_test_swapcache() is used to get swap_cache address space, but that ignores the shmem folio in swap cache case. It could lead to NULL pointer dereferencing when a in-swap-cache shmem folio is split at __xa_store(), since !folio_test_anon() is true and folio->mapping is NULL. But fortunately, its caller split_huge_page_to_list_to_order() bails out early with EBUSY when folio->mapping is NULL. So no need to take care of it here.

• CWE-476NULL Pointer DereferenceThe product dereferences a pointer that it expects to be valid but is NULL.