mm/page_reporting: use system_freezable_wq to fix UAF during suspend
Key facts
- Attack vector
- Local
- Privileges required
- Low
- User interaction
- None
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Impact type
- —
- Confidentiality · integrity · availability
- High · High · High
- Fix status
- Partial Red Hat: 3 without a fix
Attack profile from CVSS 3.1 · CNA. Fix status from CNA and Red Hat.
Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/page_reporting: use system_freezable_wq to fix UAF during suspend During PM freeze (e.g. S3 suspend or S4 hibernation), device drivers like virtio_balloon reset their underlying virtio devices and delete their virtqueues via vdev->config->del_vqs(). However, page reporting work (page_reporting_process) was scheduled on the global system_wq. Because system_wq lacks the WQ_FREEZABLE flag, the PM freezer skips it, leaving page_reporting_process active during suspend. If pages are freed into the buddy allocator while suspending (for example, when core MM invokes the balloon shrinker during S4 hibernation image saving), page reporting triggers virtballoon_free_page_report() on deleted virtqueues, resulting in a Use-After-Free / General Protection Fault: [ 196.795226] general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xaa1436fe70dae6df: 0000 [#1] SMP NOPTI [ 196.825967] Workqueue: events page_reporting_process [ 196.831038] RIP: 0010:virtqueue_add_split+0x233/0x4c0 [virtio_ring] [ 196.927073] virtballoon_free_page_report+0x3a/0xe0 [virtio_balloon] [ 196.946943] page_reporting_process+0x370/0x4f0 Fix this by switching page reporting work to system_freezable_wq. This ensures that the PM freezer pauses page_reporting_process before device drivers destroy their reporting virtqueues. Because the reporting worker is frozen, memory reclamation/freeing (e.g. via shrinker execution) can safely return pages to MM during freeze without triggering unfrozen reporting work on deleted virtqueues. This aligns with the driver's existing design. The comment in virtballoon_freeze() states: /* * The workqueue is already frozen by the PM core before this * function is called. */ Testing: I have verified these fixes using Google’s virtualization infrastructure by running continuous suspend/resume iterations (40+ cycles) while churning memory using stress-ng (`stress-ng --vm 4 --vm-bytes 60% --timeout 1`) to constantly create free pages for the buddy allocator. We also set the `page_reporting_order` parameter to 0 to make the page reporting worker highly sensitive, forcing it to pick up any 4K free pages. This confirmed that the UAF crashes are no longer reproducible.
Why it matters now
SSVC decision points
CISA ADP · SSVC 2.0.3
- Exploitation
- None
- Automatable
- No
- Technical impact
- Total
The decision (Track, Attend, Act) also depends on your mission and well-being impact; see CISA's SSVC guide.
Affected products
Remediation
- Fix · CNA Linux (Linux) Fixed in 5.10.265, 5.15.216, 6.1.183, 6.6.151, 6.12.103, 6.18.44, 7.1.8, 7.2
Vendor assessments
Red Hat
Red Hat rating: Moderate. Red Hat's page for this CVE →
| Product | Status | Plan or fix |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
Not affected: 2 products
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
Timeline
- 2026-10-02 Threatist record created from CVE-2026-74481
- 2026-10-03 Alias added: GHSA-hf76-hfqm-mx9q
- 2026-10-18 CISA SSVC decision points changed
References
Other 8
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a4c60046052777ca1dcc83fe3ece2a5136b301f1
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/b2c094e98f8bb823b3ae475f7169fe2091c40c6d
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/992f270fd808338fbae1f498a5e325e7e2e20368
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f978048326570047e8216e81a67f9c71ef2bb1b1
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/450f35f4d5a682a0796757e52295df58ddb63bc9
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/b11907c905fa08eda925395f0724b7a409870f65
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/faf439b5fa7b231120eac4f7a617e0bfd4f6f5c7
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0b45f6927a14914ff685fe0e6f9d11232a1e03df
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Sources
- CVE-2026-74481 · CVE Program
- CVE-2026-74481 · NVD
- FIRST EPSS
- GHSA-hf76-hfqm-mx9q · GitHub Advisory Database · CC BY 4.0
- CVE-2026-74481 · Red Hat security data · CC BY 4.0
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