HighCVE-2024-26759

    Linux Kernel: security vulnerability (CVE-2024-26759)

    Published Last modified Sources: Red Hat, SUSE, BSI, CVE.org, Msrc Update Guide, EUVD

    What is affected, what to do

    In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/swap: fix race when skipping swapcache When skipping swapcache for SWP_SYNCHRONOUS_IO, if two or more threads swapin the same entry at the same time, they get different pages (A, B). Before one thread (T0) finishes the swapin and installs page (A) to the PTE, another thread (T1) could finish swapin of page (B), swap_free the entry, then swap out the possibly modified page reusing the same entry.

    Update Linux Kernel to version 6.1.80, Linux Kernel to version 6.6.19, Linux Kernel to version 6.7.7.

    Affected
    • Linux Kernel lt 4.15..6.1.80
    • Linux Kernel lt 6.2..6.6.19
    • Linux Kernel lt 6.7..6.7.7
    Fixed in
    • Linux Kernel 6.1.80
    • Linux Kernel 6.6.19
    • Linux Kernel 6.7.7
    • Linux Kernel 6.8

    Not sure whether and how you are affected? Ask a question about this vulnerability

    Metrics

    7.8

    Priority

    XIEM Effective CVSS: highest available CVSS rating from NVD and vendor data.

    Source: Vendor (CNA), CVSS v3

    7.8

    CVSS v3

    Severity High on the scale from 0 to 10.

    Source: Red Hat, SUSE, BSI, CVE.org, Msrc Update Guide, EUVD

    0.3 %

    EPSS score

    Low — model estimates < 1% exploitation likelihood.

    Source: FIRST EPSS, percentile 18.3

    Show all metrics
    Severity
    High
    Priority (0–325)

    The priority score is a consolidated metric that condenses several individual signals into a single, action-guiding ranking: technical severity (CVSS), exploitation likelihood (EPSS), known-exploited status (KEV) and the context of the affected asset. The aim is to answer the only truly important question in vulnerability management: what first?

    Read in glossary
    46.53 Methodology
    Exploit maturity

    An exploit is code or a technique that specifically uses a concrete vulnerability to force unintended behaviour — such as executing code or escalating privileges. It is the tool that turns a theoretical flaw into a practical attack.

    Read in glossary
    no public PoC known
    XIEM Effective CVSS

    XIEM® is the tiered managed-security operating model from NEOSEC and a registered trademark of NEOSEC GmbH. It extends classic SIEM — the central collection, normalisation and correlation of security-relevant events — with endpoint forensics, network visibility and deception technology, and consolidates them into three building tiers: Sentry, Orchestrate and Command.

    Read in glossary
    7.8 Methodology
    CVSS v3

    CVSS is the globally established, open standard for assessing the technical severity of a vulnerability on a scale from 0 to 10. It describes how easily a flaw can be exploited and what damage it can cause — but not how likely its actual exploitation is. CVSS and the complementary EPSS deliberately answer different questions.

    Read in glossary
    7.8
    EPSS score

    The EPSS score is the absolute model output for an individual vulnerability: the estimated probability of real-world exploitation within the next 30 days, expressed as a value between 0 and 1 (i.e. 0 % to 100 %). A score of 0.42 means „the model estimates a 42 % chance of real-world exploitation within 30 days“.

    Read in glossary
    0.3 %
    Low — model estimates < 1% exploitation likelihood.
    EPSS percentile

    The EPSS percentile is the relative position of a vulnerability within all EPSS-scored CVEs, expressed as a value between 0 and 1. A percentile of 0.90 means „this CVE has a higher EPSS score than 90 % of all other scored CVEs“. Unlike the EPSS score, it is not a probability — but a positioning within a ranking.

    Read in glossary
    18.3
    Elevated — this CVE ranks above at least 10% of all CVEs scored today.
    KEV status

    The KEV catalogue is a list maintained by the US authority CISA of vulnerabilities for which active exploitation in the wild has been confirmed. It answers not the question „how severe?“ but „is it already being attacked?“ — thereby sharply prioritising patching.

    Read in glossary
    —
    Published
    CISA assessment (SSVC)
    Exploitation: none known · not automatable · Technical impact: partial
    Source: CISA Vulnrichment, as of 8 April 2024

    Detection rules

    No NEOSEC detection rule is available for this vulnerability yet.

    Classification under NIS2 and CRA

    Rule-based classification from exploitation status and severity. It does not replace a case-by-case assessment.

    NIS2

    NIS2 is EU Directive (EU) 2022/2555 to raise the level of cybersecurity across the Union. It substantially broadens obligations compared with the first NIS directive: more sectors, mandatory risk management, staged reporting duties and personal accountability of senior management.

    Read in glossary
    High technical severity: assess and remediate the vulnerability in vulnerability handling under Art. 21(2)(e) NIS2 and document the decision.
    CRA

    The CRA is EU Regulation (EU) 2024/2847 setting horizontal cybersecurity requirements for „products with digital elements“ — from industrial controllers and software to connected consumer devices. For the first time manufacturers must ensure security across the entire product lifecycle, handle vulnerabilities and provide security updates.

    Read in glossary
    From 11.12.2027, Annex I Part II CRA requires manufacturers of affected products with digital elements to handle vulnerabilities without delay and provide security updates.
    ISO/IEC 27001

    ISO/IEC 27001 is the internationally leading standard for an information security management system (ISMS). It describes a risk-based, process-oriented framework to systematically plan, implement, review and improve information security.

    Read in glossary
    Control A.8.8, management of technical vulnerabilities: assess relevance to your systems, plan remediation and keep evidence.

    Description

    In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/swap: fix race when skipping swapcache When skipping swapcache for SWP_SYNCHRONOUS_IO, if two or more threads swapin the same entry at the same time, they get different pages (A, B). Before one thread (T0) finishes the swapin and installs page (A) to the PTE, another thread (T1) could finish swapin of page (B), swap_free the entry, then swap out the possibly modified page reusing the same entry. It breaks the pte_same check in (T0) because PTE value is unchanged, causing ABA problem. Thread (T0) will install a stalled page (A) into the PTE and cause data corruption. One possible callstack is like this: CPU0 CPU1 ---- ---- do_swap_page() do_swap_page() with same entry <direct swapin path> <direct swapin path> <alloc page A> <alloc page B> swap_read_folio() <- read to page A swap_read_folio() <- read to page B <slow on later locks or interrupt> <finished swapin first> ... set_pte_at() swap_free() <- entry is free <write to page B, now page A stalled> <swap out page B to same swap entry> pte_same() <- Check pass, PTE seems unchanged, but page A is stalled! swap_free() <- page B content lost! set_pte_at() <- staled page A installed! And besides, for ZRAM, swap_free() allows the swap device to discard the entry content, so even if page (B) is not modified, if swap_read_folio() on CPU0 happens later than swap_free() on CPU1, it may also cause data loss. To fix this, reuse swapcache_prepare which will pin the swap entry using the cache flag, and allow only one thread to swap it in, also prevent any parallel code from putting the entry in the cache. Release the pin after PT unlocked. Racers just loop and wait since it's a rare and very short event. A schedule_timeout_uninterruptible(1) call is added to avoid repeated page faults wasting too much CPU, causing livelock or adding too much noise to perf statistics. A similar livelock issue was described in commit 029c4628b2eb ("mm: swap: get rid of livelock in swapin readahead") Reproducer: This race issue can be triggered easily using a well constructed reproducer and patched brd (with a delay in read path) [1]: With latest 6.8 mainline, race caused data loss can be observed easily: $ gcc -g -lpthread test-thread-swap-race.c && ./a.out Polulating 32MB of memory region... Keep swapping out... Starting round 0... Spawning 65536 workers... 32746 workers spawned, wait for done... Round 0: Error on 0x5aa00, expected 32746, got 32743, 3 data loss! Round 0: Error on 0x395200, expected 32746, got 32743, 3 data loss! Round 0: Error on 0x3fd000, expected 32746, got 32737, 9 data loss! Round 0 Failed, 15 data loss! This reproducer spawns multiple threads sharing the same memory region using a small swap device. Every two threads updates mapped pages one by one in opposite direction trying to create a race, with one dedicated thread keep swapping out the data out using madvise. The reproducer created a reproduce rate of about once every 5 minutes, so the race should be totally possible in production. After this patch, I ran the reproducer for over a few hundred rounds and no data loss observed. Performance overhead is minimal, microbenchmark swapin 10G from 32G zram: Before: 10934698 us After: 11157121 us Cached: 13155355 us (Dropping SWP_SYNCHRONOUS_IO flag) [kasong@tencent.com: v4]

    Source: redhat_csaf, suse_csaf, BSI WID Portal, BSI CSAF, cvelistv5, Microsoft Security Update Guide, NVD (NIST), ENISA EUVD

    Affected products

    The following versions are affected. Older releases of the same product line are also vulnerable unless stated otherwise.

    Affected products
    Affected versionsFixed in
    LinuxLinux
    • 6.7 – < 6.7.7
    • —
    • 4.15 – < 6.1.80
    • 6.2 – < 6.6.19
    • 6.7.7
    • 6.8
    • 6.1.80
    • 6.6.19

    Vendors and products

    Affected operating systems

    Affected operating systems
    Linuxlinuxlinux_kernel6.8
    Linuxlinuxlinux_kernel—

    References & sources

    Changes to this CVE

    Who changed this CVE and when: NVD (analysis, affected products, CVSS), the CVE publisher (CNA) and additional providers such as CISA (ADP).

    1. Record modifiedLinux

      CVSS V3.1: AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

      Show the original change
      Individual changes of this event as published by NVD
      TypeActionBeforeAfter
      CVSSadded
      —
      AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

      Source identifier: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67

    Embed badge

    Show the severity and KEV status of this vulnerability on your site – with a link back here. The image is updated hourly.

    Badge preview for CVE-2024-26759
    <a href="https://intel.neosec.eu/en/cve/CVE-2024-26759"><img src="https://intel.neosec.eu/badge/cve/CVE-2024-26759.svg?lang=en" alt="CVE-2024-26759 – NEOSEC Intel" height="20"></a>