CVE-2026-74674: mm: fix incorrect flush address in direct page table reclaim

From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <[email protected]>

Description
===========

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

mm: fix incorrect flush address in direct page table reclaim

When zap_pte_range reclaims a page table, it does:

    pte_free_tlb(tlb, pmd_pgtable(pmdval), addr);

and this is unconditionally wrong: if this code executes, addr *always*
points one past the end of the range covered by the table.  The addr
parameter is used to flush the TLB (really the paging-structure-cache)
to drop references to the to-be-freed table, and any architecture that
cares about the parameter will flush the wrong address.  (But they'll
still free the correct page).

I think it's worth contemplating why the kernel works at all.

If we hit the offending line of code, we will first clear the PMD entry
(line 1954, zap_empty_pte_table), then we will issue pending flushes if
force_flush is set (tlb_flush_mmu_tlbonly(tlb)), then we will skip the
retry on line 1979 (phew!), and then we will do the offending
pte_free_tlb call.  *Or* we will clear the PMD entry immediately before
pte_free_tlb (line 1983, zap_pte_table_if_empty).

If we have any pending flushes (i.e. we actually zapped any last-level
entries) at the time we clear the PMD entry, then the flush really ought
to flush all references to the table (Linus certainly seems to think it
will on all architectures [0]).

The condition under which we have no accumulated flushes at the time of
the clear is very complex (the whole zap_pte_range function has absurdly
complex control flow).  If we do hit the bad case, then we will end up
clearing the PMD entry after the last time the range is flushed, and any
CPU is free to cache a reference to the (empty) page table.  If this
happens due to an ordinary read or write, it would segfault, so it would
be rare.  But the cache could be speculatively filled as well.  Then
we'll flush the wrong address and then free and possibly reuse the
table.

On x86, even flushing the wrong address works on non-KPTI Intel systems
because INVLPG flushes *all* paging-structure-caches, not just the ones
for the target address.  But INVPCID does not, and flush_tlb_one_user
will use INVPCID if it's available.  And then we're toast.  AMD systems
are more susceptible: we set the EFER.TCE bit, which makes even INVLPG
only flush the target address.

I think this might fix an issue in ripgrep reported here:
https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/issues/3494

[0] https://lore.kernel.org/all/CA+55aFzBggoXtNXQeng5d_mRoDnaMBE5Y+URs+PHR67nUpMtaw@mail.gmail.com/T/#u

The Linux kernel CVE team has assigned CVE-2026-74674 to this issue.


Affected and fixed versions
===========================

	Issue introduced in 7.0 with commit 4c640eb4181cf8de74c8b9e7c9cf16bf8d26b73e and fixed in 7.1.9 with commit 0b8ff21cbda8808c86b18f1b0ca2d0025af9a80a
	Issue introduced in 7.0 with commit 4c640eb4181cf8de74c8b9e7c9cf16bf8d26b73e and fixed in 7.2 with commit 478a1c3abebfc717db0d1281a9cdd7befafee542

Please see https://www.kernel.org for a full list of currently supported
kernel versions by the kernel community.

Unaffected versions might change over time as fixes are backported to
older supported kernel versions.  The official CVE entry at
	https://cve.org/CVERecord/?id=CVE-2026-74674
will be updated if fixes are backported, please check that for the most
up to date information about this issue.


Affected files
==============

The file(s) affected by this issue are:
	mm/memory.c


Mitigation
==========

The Linux kernel CVE team recommends that you update to the latest
stable kernel version for this, and many other bugfixes.  Individual
changes are never tested alone, but rather are part of a larger kernel
release.  Cherry-picking individual commits is not recommended or
supported by the Linux kernel community at all.  If however, updating to
the latest release is impossible, the individual changes to resolve this
issue can be found at these commits:
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0b8ff21cbda8808c86b18f1b0ca2d0025af9a80a
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/478a1c3abebfc717db0d1281a9cdd7befafee542