LoongArch: Fix missing dirty page tracking in {pte,pmd}_wrprotect()
Key facts
- Attack vector
- Local
- Privileges required
- Low
- User interaction
- None
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Impact type
- —
- Confidentiality · integrity · availability
- High · High · None
- 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: LoongArch: Fix missing dirty page tracking in {pte,pmd}_wrprotect() When hardware page table walker (PTW) is enabled on LoongArch, the CPU may set _PAGE_DIRTY directly in the page table entry during a write TLB miss, without going through the software TLB store handler. The software TLB store handler (tlbex.S:254) sets both _PAGE_DIRTY and_PAGE_MODIFIED together: ori t0, t0, (_PAGE_VALID | _PAGE_DIRTY | _PAGE_MODIFIED) Since hardware PTW only sets _PAGE_DIRTY, the software-only bit, i.e. _PAGE_MODIFIED is left unchanged. This creates a window where a PTE has _PAGE_DIRTY set (hardware knows the page is dirty) but _PAGE_MODIFIED clear (software is unaware). When fork()/clone() triggers copy-on-write, __copy_present_ptes() calls pte_wrprotect(), which unconditionally clears both the _PAGE_WRITE and _PAGE_DIRTY bits: pte_val(pte) &= ~(_PAGE_WRITE | _PAGE_DIRTY); Since _PAGE_MODIFIED was never set, the dirtiness information is lost completely. Subsequently, when memory pressure triggers page reclaim, page_mkclean() / try_to_unmap() sees the page as clean (i.e. pte_dirty() returns false) and the page may be freed without writeback, causing data corruption. Fix this by propagating the _PAGE_DIRTY bit to the _PAGE_MODIFIED bit in both pte_wrprotect() and pmd_wrprotect() before clearing writeable bits: if (pte_val(pte) & _PAGE_DIRTY) pte_val(pte) |= _PAGE_MODIFIED; The pmd_wrprotect() fix handles the CONFIG_TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE case, where pmd entries need the same treatment. This ensures the software dirty tracking bit (checked by pte_dirty() and pmd_dirty(), which read both the _PAGE_DIRTY and _PAGE_MODIFIED bits) is preserved across fork COW write-protection. The issue was found by the LTP madvise09 test case, which exercises page reclaim after "madvise(MADV_FREE), write and fork" operation sequence on private anonymous mappings.
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 6.1.178, 6.6.145, 6.12.97, 6.18.40, 7.1.5, 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-2026-72043
- 2026-10-03 Alias added: GHSA-f7xg-fgxp-p6w3
References
Other 6
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/76f88650763a35cbf1384c65d66d096fa31cc58d
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e8a916579e427af32f2de8213dfa23c5df6e6664
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/39bb21a4bff0d70058bf752d7b5aa2e2ccc864a9
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a65f49b6f7ece756394f8f0e85570020e7fd0e35
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e483da960892c41fa7f0cf0d2fc2410d65a483d6
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/018e9828eb523c638fa3d9bdf0fd4956b74555b2
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Sources
- CVE-2026-72043 · CVE Program
- CVE-2026-72043 · NVD
- FIRST EPSS
- GHSA-f7xg-fgxp-p6w3 · GitHub Advisory Database · CC BY 4.0
- CVE-2026-72043 · Red Hat security data · CC BY 4.0
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