CVE-2026-43389

Medium

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm: memfd_luo: always dirty all folios A dirty folio is one which has been written to. A clean folio is its opposite. Since a clean folio has no user data, it can be freed under memory pressure. memfd preservation with LUO saves the flag at preserve(). This is problematic. The folio might get dirtied later. Saving it at freeze() also doesn't work, since the dirty bit from PTE is normally synced at unmap and there might still be mappings of the file at freeze(). To see why this is a problem, say a folio is clean at preserve, but gets dirtied later. The serialized state of the folio will mark it as clean. After retrieve, the next kernel will see the folio as clean and might try to reclaim it under memory pressure. This will result in losing user data. Mark all folios of the file as dirty, and always set the MEMFD_LUO_FOLIO_DIRTY flag. This comes with the side effect of making all clean folios un-reclaimable. This is a cost that has to be paid for participants of live update. It is not expected to be a common use case to preserve a lot of clean folios anyway. Since the value of pfolio->flags is a constant now, drop the flags variable and set it directly.

Package Linux Kernel
Published 2026-05-08
Last modified 2026-05-26
CVSS version 3.1
Patch available
Yes

CVSS 3.1 score

5.5

out of 10
Medium
Attack Vector
Local
Attack Complexity
Low
Privileges Required
Low
User Interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
Low
Integrity
None
Availability
High
Vector string
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected versions

Linux kernel versions 6.19 and later are affected. Fixed in 6.19.9, 7.0 and their respective stable series.

Affected from
≥ 6.19
Fixed in
✓ 6.19.9 6.19.x ✓ 7.0

References

The following references provide additional information about CVE-2026-43389 including vendor advisories, patch commits, exploit details, and third-party analysis. Links are sourced from the NIST NVD database.

Frequently asked questions

  • What is CVE-2026-43389?

    CVE-2026-43389 is a Medium severity Linux kernel vulnerability with a CVSS score of 5.5 out of 10 . It affects Linux kernel versions from 6.19 onward and has been patched in 6.19.9 and 7.0. CVE-2026-43389 has not been confirmed as actively exploited and is not listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

  • What is the CVSS score for CVE-2026-43389?

    CVE-2026-43389 has a CVSS score of 5.5 out of 10, rated Medium severity (CVSS 3.1). The vector string is CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H .

  • Is there a patch available for CVE-2026-43389?

    Yes — CVE-2026-43389 has been patched. Fixed versions include 6.19.9 and 7.0. If you are running Linux kernel 6.19 or later up to the fix versions, apply the relevant patch for your kernel branch.

  • Is CVE-2026-43389 actively exploited?

    No — CVE-2026-43389 has not been confirmed as actively exploited. It is not listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog.