VDB

CVE-2026-43303

CVE-2026-43303 PUBLISHED CVSS 9.300000190734863 CRITICAL

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/page_alloc: clear page->private in free_pages_prepare() Several subsystems (slub, shmem, ttm, etc.) use page->private but don't clear it before freeing pages. When these pages are later allocated as high-order pages and split via split_page(), tail pages retain stale page->private values. This causes a use-after-free in the swap subsystem. The swap code uses page->private to track swap count continuations, assuming freshly allocated pages have page->private == 0. When stale values are present, swap_count_continued() incorrectly assumes the continuation list is valid and iterates over uninitialized page->lru containing LIST_POISON values, causing a crash: KASAN: maybe wild-memory-access in range [0xdead000000000100-0xdead000000000107] RIP: 0010:__do_sys_swapoff+0x1151/0x1860 Fix this by clearing page->private in free_pages_prepare(), ensuring all freed pages have clean state regardless of previous use.

EPSS 0.01% · 2.3th percentile

Risk Scores

CVSS v4.0
9.300000190734863
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
EPSS Score
0.01%
2.3th percentile

Affected Products

VendorProductVersions
LinuxLinux*, 6.18.16, 6.19.6
linuxlinux_kernel5.18, 5.18, 5.18

Timeline

  • May 8, 2026 CVE Published
  • May 8, 2026 PoC Published
  • May 8, 2026 CVE Updated
  • May 8, 2026 Security Advisory
  • May 18, 2026 EPSS Score
  • May 19, 2026 EPSS Score
  • May 20, 2026 EPSS Score
  • May 21, 2026 EPSS Score
  • May 22, 2026 EPSS Score
  • May 23, 2026 EPSS Score
  • May 24, 2026 EPSS Score
  • May 25, 2026 EPSS Score
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