CVE-2026-46279: mm/alloc_tag: clear codetag for pages allocated before page_ext initialization

CVE-2026-46279: mm/alloc_tag: clear codetag for pages allocated before page_ext initialization

[Greg Kroah-Hartman]

From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@kernel.org>

Description
===========

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

mm/alloc_tag: clear codetag for pages allocated before page_ext initialization

Due to initialization ordering, page_ext is allocated and initialized
relatively late during boot.  Some pages have already been allocated and
freed before page_ext becomes available, leaving their codetag
uninitialized.

A clear example is in init_section_page_ext(): alloc_page_ext() calls
kmemleak_alloc().  If the slab cache has no free objects, it falls back to
the buddy allocator to allocate memory.  However, at this point page_ext
is not yet fully initialized, so these newly allocated pages have no
codetag set.  These pages may later be reclaimed by KASAN, which causes
the warning to trigger when they are freed because their codetag ref is
still empty.

Use a global array to track pages allocated before page_ext is fully
initialized.  The array size is fixed at 8192 entries, and will emit a
warning if this limit is exceeded.  When page_ext initialization
completes, set their codetag to empty to avoid warnings when they are
freed later.

This warning is only observed with CONFIG_MEM_ALLOC_PROFILING_DEBUG=Y and
mem_profiling_compressed disabled:

[    9.582133] ------------[ cut here ]------------
[    9.582137] alloc_tag was not set
[    9.582139] WARNING: ./include/linux/alloc_tag.h:164 at __pgalloc_tag_sub+0x40f/0x550, CPU#5: systemd/1
[    9.582190] CPU: 5 UID: 0 PID: 1 Comm: systemd Not tainted 7.0.0-rc4 #1 PREEMPT(lazy)
[    9.582192] Hardware name: Red Hat KVM, BIOS rel-1.16.3-0-ga6ed6b701f0a-prebuilt.qemu.org 04/01/2014
[    9.582194] RIP: 0010:__pgalloc_tag_sub+0x40f/0x550
[    9.582196] Code: 00 00 4c 29 e5 48 8b 05 1f 88 56 05 48 8d 4c ad 00 48 8d 2c c8 e9 87 fd ff ff 0f 0b 0f 0b e9 f3 fe ff ff 48 8d 3d 61 2f ed 03 <67> 48 0f b9 3a e9 b3 fd ff ff 0f 0b eb e4 e8 5e cd 14 02 4c 89 c7
[    9.582197] RSP: 0018:ffffc9000001f940 EFLAGS: 00010246
[    9.582200] RAX: dffffc0000000000 RBX: 1ffff92000003f2b RCX: 1ffff110200d806c
[    9.582201] RDX: ffff8881006c0360 RSI: 0000000000000004 RDI: ffffffff9bc7b460
[    9.582202] RBP: 0000000000000000 R08: 0000000000000000 R09: fffffbfff3a62324
[    9.582203] R10: ffffffff9d311923 R11: 0000000000000000 R12: ffffea0004001b00
[    9.582204] R13: 0000000000002000 R14: ffffea0000000000 R15: ffff8881006c0360
[    9.582206] FS:  00007ffbbcf2d940(0000) GS:ffff888450479000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000
[    9.582208] CS:  0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033
[    9.582210] CR2: 000055ee3aa260d0 CR3: 0000000148b67005 CR4: 0000000000770ef0
[    9.582211] PKRU: 55555554
[    9.582212] Call Trace:
[    9.582213]  <TASK>
[    9.582214]  ? __pfx___pgalloc_tag_sub+0x10/0x10
[    9.582216]  ? check_bytes_and_report+0x68/0x140
[    9.582219]  __free_frozen_pages+0x2e4/0x1150
[    9.582221]  ? __free_slab+0xc2/0x2b0
[    9.582224]  qlist_free_all+0x4c/0xf0
[    9.582227]  kasan_quarantine_reduce+0x15d/0x180
[    9.582229]  __kasan_slab_alloc+0x69/0x90
[    9.582232]  kmem_cache_alloc_noprof+0x14a/0x500
[    9.582234]  do_getname+0x96/0x310
[    9.582237]  do_readlinkat+0x91/0x2f0
[    9.582239]  ? __pfx_do_readlinkat+0x10/0x10
[    9.582240]  ? get_random_bytes_user+0x1df/0x2c0
[    9.582244]  __x64_sys_readlinkat+0x96/0x100
[    9.582246]  do_syscall_64+0xce/0x650
[    9.582250]  ? __x64_sys_getrandom+0x13a/0x1e0
[    9.582252]  ? __pfx___x64_sys_getrandom+0x10/0x10
[    9.582254]  ? do_syscall_64+0x114/0x650
[    9.582255]  ? ksys_read+0xfc/0x1d0
[    9.582258]  ? __pfx_ksys_read+0x10/0x10
[    9.582260]  ? do_syscall_64+0x114/0x650
[    9.582262]  ? do_syscall_64+0x114/0x650
[    9.582264]  ? __pfx_fput_close_sync+0x10/0x10
[    9.582266]  ? file_close_fd_locked+0x178/0x2a0
[    9.582268]  ? __x64_sys_faccessat2+0x96/0x100
[    9.582269]  ? __x64_sys_close+0x7d/0xd0
[    9.582271]  ? do_syscall_64+0x114/0x650
[    9.582273]  ? do_syscall_64+0x114/0x650
[    9.582275]  ? clear_bhb_loop+0x50/0xa0
[    9.582277]  ? clear_bhb_loop+0x50/0xa0
[    9.582279]  entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e
[    9.582280] RIP: 0033:0x7ffbbda345ee
[    9.582282] Code: 0f 1f 40 00 48 8b 15 29 38 0d 00 f7 d8 64 89 02 48 c7 c0 ff ff ff ff c3 0f 1f 40 00 f3 0f 1e fa 49 89 ca b8 0b 01 00 00 0f 05 <48> 3d 01 f0 ff ff 73 01 c3 48 8b 0d fa 37 0d 00 f7 d8 64 89 01 48
[    9.582284] RSP: 002b:00007ffe2ad8de58 EFLAGS: 00000202 ORIG_RAX: 000000000000010b
[    9.582286] RAX: ffffffffffffffda RBX: 000055ee3aa25570 RCX: 00007ffbbda345ee
[    9.582287] RDX: 000055ee3aa25570 RSI: 00007ffe2ad8dee0 RDI: 00000000ffffff9c
[    9.582288] RBP: 0000000000001000 R08: 0000000000000003 R09: 0000000000001001
[    9.582289] R10: 0000000000001000 R11: 0000000000000202 R12: 0000000000000033
[    9.582290] R13: 00007ffe2ad8dee0 R14: 00000000ffffff9c R15: 00007ffe2ad8deb0
[    9.582292]  </TASK>
[    9.582293] ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]---

The Linux kernel CVE team has assigned CVE-2026-46279 to this issue.


Affected and fixed versions
===========================

	Issue introduced in 6.10 with commit dcfe378c81f72f146890ce1dcfdcc742d3b66924 and fixed in 6.18.27 with commit d5b495ba9de0423ef39f8bd86729a885870c7efe
	Issue introduced in 6.10 with commit dcfe378c81f72f146890ce1dcfdcc742d3b66924 and fixed in 7.0.4 with commit b49dfabc38cad5e50af24f63edd124a10de3ebb6
	Issue introduced in 6.10 with commit dcfe378c81f72f146890ce1dcfdcc742d3b66924 and fixed in 7.1-rc1 with commit 6b1842775a460245e97d36d3a67d0cfba7c4ff79

Please see https://www.kernel.org for a full list of currently supported
kernel versions by the kernel community.

Unaffected versions might change over time as fixes are backported to
older supported kernel versions.  The official CVE entry at
	https://cve.org/CVERecord/?id=CVE-2026-46279
will be updated if fixes are backported, please check that for the most
up to date information about this issue.


Affected files
==============

The file(s) affected by this issue are:
	include/linux/alloc_tag.h
	include/linux/pgalloc_tag.h
	lib/alloc_tag.c
	mm/page_alloc.c


Mitigation
==========

The Linux kernel CVE team recommends that you update to the latest
stable kernel version for this, and many other bugfixes.  Individual
changes are never tested alone, but rather are part of a larger kernel
release.  Cherry-picking individual commits is not recommended or
supported by the Linux kernel community at all.  If however, updating to
the latest release is impossible, the individual changes to resolve this
issue can be found at these commits:
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/d5b495ba9de0423ef39f8bd86729a885870c7efe
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/b49dfabc38cad5e50af24f63edd124a10de3ebb6
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/6b1842775a460245e97d36d3a67d0cfba7c4ff79