CVE-2025-68231mm/mempool: fix poisoning order>0 pages with HIGHMEM

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/mempool: fix poisoning order>0 pages with HIGHMEM The kernel test has reported: BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: fffba000 #PF: supervisor write access in kernel mode #PF: error_code(0x0002) - not-present page *pde = 03171067 *pte = 00000000 Oops: Oops: 0002 [#1] CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 1 Comm: swapper/0 Tainted: G T 6.18.0-rc2-00031-gec7f31b2a2d3 #1 NONE a1d066dfe789f54bc7645c7989957d2bdee593ca Tainted: [T]=RANDSTRUCT Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS 1.16.3-debian-1.16.3-2 04/01/2014 EIP: memset (arch/x86/include/asm/string_32.h:168 arch/x86/lib/memcpy_32.c:17) Code: a5 8b 4d f4 83 e1 03 74 02 f3 a4 83 c4 04 5e 5f 5d 2e e9 73 41 01 00 90 90 90 3e 8d 74 26 00 55 89 e5 57 56 89 c6 89 d0 89 f7 <f3> aa 89 f0 5e 5f 5d 2e e9 53 41 01 00 cc cc cc 55 89 e5 53 57 56 EAX: 0000006b EBX: 00000015 ECX: 001fefff EDX: 0000006b ESI: fffb9000 EDI: fffba000 EBP: c611fbf0 ESP: c611fbe8 DS: 007b ES: 007b FS: 0000 GS: 0000 SS: 0068 EFLAGS: 00010287 CR0: 80050033 CR2: fffba000 CR3: 0316e000 CR4: 00040690 Call Trace: poison_element (mm/mempool.c:83 mm/mempool.c:102) mempool_init_node (mm/mempool.c:142 mm/mempool.c:226) mempool_init_noprof (mm/mempool.c:250 (discriminator 1)) ? mempool_alloc_pages (mm/mempool.c:640) bio_integrity_initfn (block/bio-integrity.c:483 (discriminator 8)) ? mempool_alloc_pages (mm/mempool.c:640) do_one_initcall (init/main.c:1283) Christoph found out this is due to the poisoning code not dealing properly with CONFIG_HIGHMEM because only the first page is mapped but then the whole potentially high-order page is accessed. We could give up on HIGHMEM here, but it's straightforward to fix this with a loop that's mapping, poisoning or checking and unmapping individual pages.

Timeline

Scores

No CVSS score yet: neither the CNA, CISA nor NVD has scored this CVE. NVD status: Deferred.

EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)

0.19% · top 92% of all CVEs (15 Nov 2026)

The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: Not scored.

Affected products

• Linux · Linux

  • affected bdfedb76f4f5aa5e37380e3b71adee4a39f30fc6 – < ea4131665107e66ece90e66bcec1a2f1246cbd41
  • affected bdfedb76f4f5aa5e37380e3b71adee4a39f30fc6 – < 19de79aaea33ee1ea058c8711b3b2b4a7e4decd4
  • affected bdfedb76f4f5aa5e37380e3b71adee4a39f30fc6 – < 6a13b56537e7b0d97f4bb74e8038ce471f9770d7
  • affected bdfedb76f4f5aa5e37380e3b71adee4a39f30fc6 – < a79e49e1704367b635edad1479db23d7cf1fb71a
  • affected bdfedb76f4f5aa5e37380e3b71adee4a39f30fc6 – < ec33b59542d96830e3c89845ff833cf7b25ef172

• Linux · Linux

  • affected 4.1
  • unaffected < 4.1
  • unaffected 6.1.159 – ≤ 6.1.*
  • unaffected 6.6.118 – ≤ 6.6.*
  • unaffected 6.12.60 – ≤ 6.12.*
  • unaffected 6.17.10 – ≤ 6.17.*
  • unaffected 6.18 – ≤ *

Sources

The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.

• CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
• CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
• NVD (opens in a new tab)
• FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
• EUVD EUVD-2025-203665 (opens in a new tab)
• OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
• GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
• CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)

Badge for a README or a ticket

[![CVE-2025-68231](https://cveledger.app/badge/CVE-2025-68231.svg)](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2025-68231)

Record last updated 11 May 2026, 21:49 UTC.