CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2026-23161 — Linux Linux Kernel security vulnerability

High CVSS 7.3

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/shmem, swap: fix race of truncate and swap entry split The helper for shmem swap freeing is not handling the order of swap entries correctly. It uses xa_cmpxchg_irq to erase the swap entry, but it gets the entry order before that using xa_get_order without lock protection, and it may get an outdated order value if the entry is split or changed in other ways after the xa_get_order and before the xa_cmpxchg_irq. And besides, the order could grow and be larger than expected, and cause truncation to erase data beyond the end border. For example, if the target entry and following entries are swapped in or freed, then a large folio was added in place and swapped out, using the same entry, the xa_cmpxchg_irq will still succeed, it's very unlikely to happen though. To fix that, open code the Xarray cmpxchg and put the order retrieval and value checking in the same critical section. Also, ensure the order won't exceed the end border, skip it if the entry goes across the border. Skipping large swap entries crosses the end border is safe here. Shmem truncate iterates the range twice, in the first iteration, find_lock_entr…

Severity
High
CVSS
7.3 (3.1)
Published
2026-02-14
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
linux/kernel
Weaknesses
CWE-362

Affected products

  • linux / linux_kernel
  • linux / linux_kernel / 6.19

Showing 2 representative product identities from 9 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

Race condition, TOCTOU, and lifecycle synchronization

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Check exposure

  • Map concurrent actors, shared state, lock boundaries, signals, callbacks, retries, and check-then-use sequences in the affected path.
  • Determine whether untrusted users can influence timing, object names, filesystem state, or repeated state transitions.
  • Identify clustered and multi-process behavior that repository-local tests may not represent.

Remediate safely

  • Make the sensitive state transition atomic or protect it with a consistently ordered synchronization primitive.
  • Perform authorization and invariant checks on the same authoritative object and transaction used for the operation.
  • Use unique private resources, safe ownership transfer, and idempotent operations; add deterministic concurrency regression tests.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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