CVE-2024-50263: In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: fork: only invoke khugepaged, ksm hooks if no error There is no reason to invoke these hoo

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: fork: only invoke khugepaged, ksm hooks if no error There is no reason to invoke these hoo

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: fork: only invoke khugepaged, ksm hooks if no error There is no reason to invoke these hooks early against an mm that is in an incomplete state. The change in commit d24062914837 ("fork: use __mt_dup() to duplicate maple tree in dup_mmap()") makes this more pertinent as we may be in a state where entries in the maple tree are not yet consistent. Their placement early in dup_mmap() only appears to have been meaningful for early error checking, and since functionally it'd require a very small allocation to fail (in practice 'too small to fail') that'd only occur in the most dire circumstances, meaning the fork would fail or be OOM'd in any case. Since both khugepaged and KSM tracking are there to provide optimisations to memory performance rather than critical functionality, it doesn't really matter all that much if, under such dire memory pressure, we fail to register an mm with these. As a result, we follow the example of commit d2081b2bf819 ("mm: khugepaged: make khugepaged_enter() void function") and make ksm_fork() a void function also. We only expose the mm to these functions once we are done with them a

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 0.21%, higher than 11% of CVEs. That’s low, but low isn’t zero, and the odds jump the day someone publishes an exploit. Scored October 31, 2026, updated daily.

Check your own setup

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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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