sched/mmcid: Fix OOB clear_bit when CID is MM_CID_UNSET in fixup path
Key facts
- Attack vector
- Local
- Privileges required
- Low
- User interaction
- None
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Impact type
- —
- Confidentiality · integrity · availability
- High · High · High
- Fix status
- Fixed
Attack profile from CVSS 3.1 · CNA. Fix status from CNA.
Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: sched/mmcid: Fix OOB clear_bit when CID is MM_CID_UNSET in fixup path In mm_cid_fixup_cpus_to_tasks(), when rq->curr has the target mm and mm_cid.active is set, the CID is checked with cid_in_transit() before setting the transition bit. In per-CPU mode a newly forked or exec'd task can be running with mm_cid.cid == MM_CID_UNSET because CIDs are assigned lazily on schedule-in. With cid_in_transit() the guard passes for MM_CID_UNSET (no transit bit), converts it to MM_CID_UNSET | MM_CID_TRANSIT and stores it back; later mm_cid_schedout() feeds this to clear_bit() with MM_CID_UNSET as the bit number, triggering an out-of-bounds write. Symptoms: this is genuine memory corruption, but a bounded out-of-bounds write, not an arbitrary one. MM_CID_UNSET is the fixed sentinel BIT(31), so once the bad value reaches mm_cid_schedout() the cid_from_transit_cid() strip leaves MM_CID_UNSET, which fails the "cid < max_cids" convergence test and falls into mm_drop_cid() -> clear_bit(MM_CID_UNSET, mm_cidmask(mm)). The cid bitmap is embedded in the mm_struct slab object (after cpu_bitmap and mm_cpus_allowed) and is only num_possible_cpus() bits wide, so clearing bit 31 is a deterministic OOB bit-clear at a fixed offset of 2^31 / 8 == 256 MiB past the bitmap base. The address is not attacker-influenced (fixed sentinel -> fixed offset) and the op only clears a single bit; what sits 256 MiB further along the direct map is whatever kernel object happens to live there, so this corrupts one bit of unpredictable kernel memory -- it is not an arbitrary-address or arbitrary-value write. It triggers only in per-CPU CID mode, when a CPU is running an active task of the target mm whose cid is still MM_CID_UNSET -- the fork()/execve() window before that task's next schedule-in assigns it a real CID -- and a per-CPU -> per-task fixup walks over it (the mode fallback driven by a thread exit, sched_mm_cid_exit(), or by the deferred max_cids recompute in mm_cid_work_fn()). In practice syzkaller surfaced it as a KASAN use-after-free reported in __schedule -> mm_cid_switch_to, where the offending clear_bit() is inlined via mm_cid_schedout() -> mm_drop_cid(). Guard the transition-bit assignment against MM_CID_UNSET, in addition to the existing cid_in_transit() check, so the bit is only set on a genuine task-owned CID. A CPU-owned (MM_CID_ONCPU) CID of a running active task is handled by the cid_on_cpu(pcp->cid) branch above and never reaches this path, so excluding MM_CID_UNSET (and the already-transitioning case) is sufficient.
Why it matters now
SSVC decision points
Not available: CISA has not published SSVC decision points for this record.
Affected products
Remediation
- Fix · CNA Linux (Linux) Fixed in 7.1.3, 7.2
Vendor assessments
Red Hat
Red Hat rating: Moderate. Red Hat's page for this CVE →
Not affected: 5 products
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9
Timeline
- 2026-10-02 Threatist record created from CVE-2026-63799
- 2026-10-03 Alias added: GHSA-2w6g-3pwr-88wc
- 2026-10-20 Affected versions changed · Red Hat
References
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Sources
- CVE-2026-63799 · CVE Program
- CVE-2026-63799 · NVD
- FIRST EPSS
- GHSA-2w6g-3pwr-88wc · GitHub Advisory Database · CC BY 4.0
- CVE-2026-63799 · Red Hat security data · CC BY 4.0
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