CVE-2026-72169

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's 'kho' component, responsible for memory management. When a user specifies fixed scratch sizes via the command line, these sizes are not consistently aligned to 'CMA_MIN_ALIGNMENT_BYTES'. This can result in the kernel releasing a pageblock that is only partially used for scratch, potentially leading to memory corruption or system instability.

A flaw of Moderate security impact was found in the Linux kernel's kexec handover (kho) subsystem. When fixed kho scratch-region sizes are specified on the kernel command line, the sizes are not rounded up to CMA_MIN_ALIGNMENT_BYTES, unlike the sizes derived from the scratch_scale option. Because these scratch pages are later released as MIGRATE_CMA, an unaligned fixed size can cause the kernel to release a pageblock that is only partially scratch, potentially leading to memory corruption or system instability (denial of service). Triggering the flaw requires local access with the ability to set the kernel command-line parameters that define the kho scratch size. The vulnerable kho code is not present in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat In-Vehicle OS kernels shipped in currently maintained streams, so all tracked Red Hat kernel, kernel-rt, kernel-ivos-qualcomm, and related components are marked not affected for this flaw.

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.