CVE-2022-49554: In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: zsmalloc: fix races between asynchronous zspage free and page migration The asynchronous z

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: zsmalloc: fix races between asynchronous zspage free and page migration The asynchronous z

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: zsmalloc: fix races between asynchronous zspage free and page migration The asynchronous zspage free worker tries to lock a zspage's entire page list without defending against page migration. Since pages which haven't yet been locked can concurrently migrate off the zspage page list while lock_zspage() churns away, lock_zspage() can suffer from a few different lethal races. It can lock a page which no longer belongs to the zspage and unsafely dereference page_private(), it can unsafely dereference a torn pointer to the next page (since there's a data race), and it can observe a spurious NULL pointer to the next page and thus not lock all of the zspage's pages (since a single page migration will reconstruct the entire page list, and create_page_chain() unconditionally zeroes out each list pointer in the process). Fix the races by using migrate_read_lock() in lock_zspage() to synchronize with page migration.

Description from the National Vulnerability Database, published by 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67

What it means for a small business

Linux is on the computers, phones or browsers your team uses every day. Turn on automatic updates and restart: most of these fixes only take effect after a restart.

How likely is an attack? The Exploit Prediction Scoring System, run by FIRST (the global association of security response teams), puts the odds of this one being exploited in the next 30 days at 0.22%, higher than 12% of CVEs. That’s low, but low isn’t zero, and the odds jump the day someone publishes an exploit. Scored October 29, 2026, updated daily.

Check your own setup

Website check: reads what your site runs from the outside (WordPress version, plugins it can see, old server software) and matches it against this database.
Server check: what your web server says about itself, and whether that version has known flaws.

Sources

Part of the Huttenlocher Technologies vulnerability database, refreshed twice a day from CISA and the NVD. The title, category and plain-language guidance are ours; check the linked record before acting on a detail. This is general guidance, not a review of your systems.

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