mm/secretmem: properly account locked pages
Key facts
- Attack vector
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- Privileges required
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- User interaction
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- Attack complexity
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- Impact type
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- Confidentiality · integrity · availability
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- Fix status
- Partial Red Hat: 4 without a fix
No CVSS vector from any source. Fix status from CNA and Red Hat.
Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/secretmem: properly account locked pages secretmem accounts folios by treating memory as if it were mlock()'d and thus limited by the RLIMIT_MEMLOCK limit. However the folios are unevictable and remain so until the inode is evicted, eliminating usual mlock() semantics - mapping folios then unmapping them does not clear their unevictable state, since it depends on AS_UNEVICTABLE, not PG_mlocked. A user can therefore easily work around the RLIMIT_MEMLOCK limit - simply map then unmap and VmLck no longer counts the secretmem range. Worse, folios are not accounted in the process's RSS, meaning the OOM killer won't know to kill the process. Repeatedly mapping/unmapping (or forking) can then result in the consumption of all available system memory with unevictable folios and cause system instability. A secretmem fd can be passed between processes and over fork so a per-process limit simply does not make sense, so follow the precedent set by io_uring, perf, skbuff, iommufd and xdp by tracking the number of locked pages in user_struct->locked_vm. Since the scope tracked is actually inode lifetime, the RLIMIT_MEMLOCK applies per-user not per-process, so it doesn't make sense to bypass for users with CAP_IPC_LOCK, therefore remove this bypass. There is simply no reason to carry on marking the mapping as mlock()'d since it's misleading and the lifecycle is now correctly handled, so remove this too. Note that secretmem does not support any form of truncation (including hole punching) and the folios are unreclaimable, so the folios need only be accounted on fault and unaccounted on inode destruction. __secretmem_account_pages() is more or less a duplicate of the code that io_uring etc. use, but since this is a bug fix that needs backporting, defer any de-duplication efforts to a follow-up. test_mlock_limit() asserts mlock_future_ok() on mmap(), however this has been removed, so remove the test altogether for the fix. A new test will be sent separately for upstream.
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 6.1.191, 6.6.160, 6.12.113, 6.18.52, 7.2.5, 7.3
Vendor assessments
Red Hat
Red Hat rating: Low. 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 9 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 5 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
Not affected: 4 products
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
- Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4
Timeline
- 2026-10-02 Threatist record created from CVE-2026-93243
- 2026-10-03 Alias added: GHSA-9q86-wxfp-682m
- 2026-10-16 Fix available: Linux/[email protected], Linux/Linux@a41c95ac90f285cbe473b9606428b14518896ea4 · CNA
- 2026-10-16 1 new reference · CNA
- 2026-10-19 Fix available: Linux/[email protected] · CNA
- 2026-10-21 Affected versions changed · Red Hat
- 2026-10-21 CVSS score added · Red Hat
- 2026-10-21 Fix available: Linux/Linux@51fba083e454f901947d6a335eeff671171d4714, Linux/[email protected] · CNA
- 2026-10-21 1 new reference · CNA
- 2026-10-30 Fix available: Linux/Linux@37fd10e3d079bccf348180ff0bdac074d84ff31f, Linux/[email protected] · CNA
- 2026-10-30 1 new reference · CNA
- 2026-11-07 Affected versions changed · Red Hat
References
Other 6
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/37fd10e3d079bccf348180ff0bdac074d84ff31f
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/51fba083e454f901947d6a335eeff671171d4714
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a41c95ac90f285cbe473b9606428b14518896ea4
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/853043cb129473ff2fa0090602be944d96b9d5c9
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3b4f72bdddff69819d665395376329ef21f37a06
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/97d34aa65c29cca85e3e9050f4c936389b38a054
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Sources
- CVE-2026-93243 · CVE Program
- CVE-2026-93243 · NVD
- FIRST EPSS
- GHSA-9q86-wxfp-682m · GitHub Advisory Database · CC BY 4.0
- CVE-2026-93243 · Red Hat security data · CC BY 4.0
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