CVE-2025-68248

Source
https://cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-68248
Import Source
https://storage.googleapis.com/cve-osv-conversion/osv-output/CVE-2025-68248.json
JSON Data
https://api.osv.dev/v1/vulns/CVE-2025-68248
Downstream
Published
2025-12-16T14:32:15.430Z
Modified
2025-12-16T20:36:44.864582Z
Summary
vmw_balloon: indicate success when effectively deflating during migration
Details

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

vmw_balloon: indicate success when effectively deflating during migration

When migrating a balloon page, we first deflate the old page to then inflate the new page.

However, if inflating the new page succeeded, we effectively deflated the old page, reducing the balloon size.

In that case, the migration actually worked: similar to migrating+ immediately deflating the new page. The old page will be freed back to the buddy.

Right now, the core will leave the page be marked as isolated (as we returned an error). When later trying to putback that page, we will run into the WARNONONCE() in balloonpageputback().

That handling was changed in commit 3544c4faccb8 ("mm/ballooncompaction: stop using _ClearPageMovable()"); before that change, we would have tolerated that way of handling it.

To fix it, let's just return 0 in that case, making the core effectively just clear the "isolated" flag + freeing it back to the buddy as if the migration succeeded. Note that the new page will also get freed when the core puts the last reference.

Note that this also makes it all be more consistent: we will no longer unisolate the page in the balloon driver while keeping it marked as being isolated in migration core.

This was found by code inspection.

Database specific
{
    "cna_assigner": "Linux",
    "osv_generated_from": "https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/tree/main/cves/2025/68xxx/CVE-2025-68248.json"
}
References

Affected packages

Git / git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git

Affected ranges

Type
GIT
Repo
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git
Events
Introduced
3544c4faccb8f0867bc65f8007ee70bfb5054305
Fixed
aa05a044c5c2e147d726ac2fae1a97e0775eac11
Fixed
4ba5a8a7faa647ada8eae61a36517cf369f5bbe4

Affected versions

v6.*
v6.16
v6.16-rc6
v6.16-rc7
v6.17
v6.17-rc1
v6.17-rc2
v6.17-rc3
v6.17-rc4
v6.17-rc5
v6.17-rc6
v6.17-rc7
v6.17.1
v6.17.2
v6.17.3
v6.17.4
v6.17.5
v6.18-rc1

Database specific

source
"https://storage.googleapis.com/cve-osv-conversion/osv-output/CVE-2025-68248.json"

Linux / Kernel

Package

Name
Kernel

Affected ranges

Type
ECOSYSTEM
Events
Introduced
6.17.0
Fixed
6.17.6

Database specific

source
"https://storage.googleapis.com/cve-osv-conversion/osv-output/CVE-2025-68248.json"