Medium [CVE-2026-53154] restore reservation on error in hugetlb folio copy paths
This medium-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2026-53154 affecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.
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Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/hugetlb: restore reservation on error in hugetlb folio copy paths Two sites in mm/hugetlb.c allocate a hugetlb folio via alloc_hugetlb_folio() (consuming a VMA reservation) and then call copy_user_large_folio(), which became int-returning in commit 1cb9dc4b475c ("mm: hwpoison: support recovery from HugePage copy-on-write faults") and can now fail (e.g. -EHWPOISON on a hwpoisoned source page).
On the failure path, folio_put() restores the global hugetlb pool count through free_huge_folio(), but the per-VMA reservation map entry is left marked consumed: - hugetlb_mfill_atomic_pte() resubmission path (UFFDIO_COPY) - copy_hugetlb_page_range() fork-time CoW path when hugetlb_try_dup_anon_rmap() fails (rare: pinned hugetlb anon folio under fork) User-visible effect: on UFFDIO_COPY into a private hugetlb VMA where the resubmission copy fails, the reservation for that address is leaked from the VMA's reserve map.
A subsequent fault at the same address takes the no-reservation path, and under hugetlb pool pressure the task is SIGBUSed at an address it had previously reserved. The fork-time CoW path leaks the same way in the child VMA's reserve map, though it requires the much rarer combination of pinned hugetlb anon page + hwpoisoned source.
Affected versions
No affected-version range was extracted from the source record. The vendor advisory is authoritative — check it before change work.
Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 9 days ago·verify at source
Fixed versions
No fixed release is recorded yet. That does not prove no patch exists — confirm against the vendor advisory.
Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 9 days ago·verify at source
Mitigation
The source record does not include mitigation steps. That is not a statement that no fix exists — read the vendor advisory below for the authoritative guidance.
Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 9 days ago·verify at source
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