CVE-2025-40218
kernel: mm/damon/vaddr: do not repeat pte_offset_map_lock() until success
Severity
ModerateRed Hat Product Security
CVSS 3.1
Review impact separately from score.
Published · December 4, 2025
Updated · June 30, 2026
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
mm/damon/vaddr: do not repeat pte_offset_map_lock() until success
DAMON's virtual address space operation set implementation (vaddr) calls pte_offset_map_lock() inside the page table walk callback function. This is for reading and writing page table accessed bits. If pte_offset_map_lock() fails, it retries by returning the page table walk callback function with ACTION_AGAIN.
pte_offset_map_lock() can continuously fail if the target is a pmd migration entry, though. Hence it could cause an infinite page table walk if the migration cannot be done until the page table walk is finished. This indeed caused a soft lockup when CPU hotplugging and DAMON were running in parallel.
Avoid the infinite loop by simply not retrying the page table walk. DAMON is promising only a best-effort accuracy, so missing access to such pages is no problem.
CVSS score applicability
The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.
Mitigation
No mitigation is specified in collected source.
CVSS / CWE
CVSS 3.1 · 4.1CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CWE-835 · Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition ('Infinite Loop')