CVE-2026-93243

Source
https://cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-93243
Import Source
https://storage.googleapis.com/cve-osv-conversion/osv-output/CVE-2026-93243.json
JSON Data
https://api.osv.dev/v1/vulns/CVE-2026-93243
Downstream
Published
2026-09-24T15:40:27Z
Modified
2026-09-25T03:48:54Z
Summary
mm/secretmem: properly account locked pages
Details

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

mm/secretmem: properly account locked pages

secretmem accounts folios by treating memory as if it were mlock()'d and thus limited by the RLIMIT_MEMLOCK limit.

However the folios are unevictable and remain so until the inode is evicted, eliminating usual mlock() semantics - mapping folios then unmapping them does not clear their unevictable state, since it depends on AS_UNEVICTABLE, not PG_mlocked.

A user can therefore easily work around the RLIMIT_MEMLOCK limit - simply map then unmap and VmLck no longer counts the secretmem range. Worse, folios are not accounted in the process's RSS, meaning the OOM killer won't know to kill the process.

Repeatedly mapping/unmapping (or forking) can then result in the consumption of all available system memory with unevictable folios and cause system instability.

A secretmem fd can be passed between processes and over fork so a per-process limit simply does not make sense, so follow the precedent set by io_uring, perf, skbuff, iommufd and xdp by tracking the number of locked pages in user_struct->locked_vm.

Since the scope tracked is actually inode lifetime, the RLIMIT_MEMLOCK applies per-user not per-process, so it doesn't make sense to bypass for users with CAP_IPC_LOCK, therefore remove this bypass.

There is simply no reason to carry on marking the mapping as mlock()'d since it's misleading and the lifecycle is now correctly handled, so remove this too.

Note that secretmem does not support any form of truncation (including hole punching) and the folios are unreclaimable, so the folios need only be accounted on fault and unaccounted on inode destruction.

__secretmem_account_pages() is more or less a duplicate of the code that io_uring etc. use, but since this is a bug fix that needs backporting, defer any de-duplication efforts to a follow-up.

test_mlock_limit() asserts mlock_future_ok() on mmap(), however this has been removed, so remove the test altogether for the fix. A new test will be sent separately for upstream.

Database specific
{
    "cna_assigner":  "Linux",
    "osv_generated_from":  "https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/tree/main/cves/2026/93xxx/CVE-2026-93243.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
1507f51255c9ff07d75909a84e7c0d7f3c4b2f49
Fixed
853043cb129473ff2fa0090602be944d96b9d5c9
Fixed
3b4f72bdddff69819d665395376329ef21f37a06
Fixed
97d34aa65c29cca85e3e9050f4c936389b38a054

Database specific

source
"https://storage.googleapis.com/cve-osv-conversion/osv-output/CVE-2026-93243.json"

Linux / Kernel

Package

Name
Kernel

Affected ranges

Type
ECOSYSTEM
Events
Introduced
5.14.0
Fixed
6.18.52
Type
ECOSYSTEM
Events
Introduced
6.19.0
Fixed
7.2.5

Database specific

source
"https://storage.googleapis.com/cve-osv-conversion/osv-output/CVE-2026-93243.json"