CVE-2026-74481

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/page_reporting: use system_freezable_wq to fix UAF during suspend During PM freeze (e.g. S3 suspend or S4 hibernation), device drivers like virtio_balloon reset their underlying virtio devices and delete their virtqueues via vdev->config->del_vqs(). However, page reporting work (page_reporting_process) was scheduled on the global system_wq. Because system_wq lacks the WQ_FREEZABLE flag, the PM freezer skips it, leaving page_reporting_process active during suspend. If pages are freed into the buddy allocator while suspending (for example, when core MM invokes the balloon shrinker during S4 hibernation image saving), page reporting triggers virtballoon_free_page_report() on deleted virtqueues, resulting in a Use-After-Free / General Protection Fault: [ 196.795226] general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xaa1436fe70dae6df: 0000 [#1] SMP NOPTI [ 196.825967] Workqueue: events page_reporting_process [ 196.831038] RIP: 0010:virtqueue_add_split+0x233/0x4c0 [virtio_ring] [ 196.927073] virtballoon_free_page_report+0x3a/0xe0 [virtio_balloon] [ 196.946943] page_reporting_process+0x370/0x4f0 Fix this by switching page reporting work to system_freezable_wq. This ensures that the PM freezer pauses page_reporting_process before device drivers destroy their reporting virtqueues. Because the reporting worker is frozen, memory reclamation/freeing (e.g. via shrinker execution) can safely return pages to MM during freeze without triggering unfrozen reporting work on deleted virtqueues. This aligns with the driver's existing design. The comment in virtballoon_freeze() states: /* * The workqueue is already frozen by the PM core before this * function is called. */ Testing: I have verified these fixes using Google’s virtualization infrastructure by running continuous suspend/resume iterations (40+ cycles) while churning memory using stress-ng (`stress-ng --vm 4 --vm-bytes 60% --timeout 1`) to constantly create free pages for the buddy allocator. We also set the `page_reporting_order` parameter to 0 to make the page reporting worker highly sensitive, forcing it to pick up any 4K free pages. This confirmed that the UAF crashes are no longer reproducible.

Package Linux Kernel
Published 2026-08-15
Last modified 2026-08-15
Patch available
Yes

Affected versions

Linux kernel versions 5.7 and later are affected. Fixed in 6.6.151, 6.12.103, 6.18.44, 7.1.8, 7.2-rc6 and their respective stable series.

Affected from
≥ 5.7
Fixed in
✓ 6.6.151 6.6.x ✓ 6.12.103 6.12.x ✓ 6.18.44 6.18.x ✓ 7.1.8 7.1.x ✓ 7.2-rc6

Frequently asked questions

  • What is CVE-2026-74481?

    CVE-2026-74481 is a unscored severity Linux kernel vulnerability . It affects Linux kernel versions from 5.7 onward and has been patched in 6.6.151, 6.12.103, 6.18.44 and others. CVE-2026-74481 has not been confirmed as actively exploited and is not listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

  • Is there a patch available for CVE-2026-74481?

    Yes. CVE-2026-74481 has been patched. Fixed versions include 6.6.151, 6.12.103, 6.18.44 and others. If you are running Linux kernel 5.7 or later up to the fix versions, apply the relevant patch for your kernel branch.

  • Is CVE-2026-74481 actively exploited?

    No. CVE-2026-74481 has not been confirmed as actively exploited. It is not listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog.