CVE-2026-43303: mm/page_alloc: clear page->private in free_pages_prepare()
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/page_alloc: clear page->private in free_pages_prepare() Several subsystems (slub, shmem, ttm, etc.) use page->private but don't clear it before freeing pages. When these pages are later allocated as high-order pages and split via split_page(), tail pages retain stale page->private values. This causes a use-after-free in the swap subsystem. The swap code uses page->private to track swap count continuations, assuming freshly allocated pages have page->private == 0. When stale values are present, swap_count_continued() incorrectly assumes the continuation list is valid and iterates over uninitialized page->lru containing LIST_POISON values, causing a crash: KASAN: maybe wild-memory-access in range [0xdead000000000100-0xdead000000000107] RIP: 0010:__do_sys_swapoff+0x1151/0x1860 Fix this by clearing page->private in free_pages_prepare(), ensuring all freed pages have clean state regardless of previous use.
Metrics
- CVSS v3.1
- 7.8
- Severity
- HIGH
- Fixed in
- 0
- Affected Products
- 2
Fix available
- Linux / Linux< 23b82b7a26182ad840ae67d390d7ec9771e8c00f (from 3b8000ae185cb068adbda5f966a3835053c85fd4) · < d757c793853ec5483eb41ec2942c300b8fa720fb (from 3b8000ae185cb068adbda5f966a3835053c85fd4) · < ac1ea219590c09572ed5992dc233bbf7bb70fef9 (from 3b8000ae185cb068adbda5f966a3835053c85fd4)
- Linux / Linux5.18Fixed in 0, 6.18.16, 6.19.6, 7.0
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H