CVE-2025-68199 — codetag: debug: handle existing CODETAG_EMPTY in mark_objexts_empty for slabobj_ext

Affected: Linux

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

codetag: debug: handle existing CODETAG_EMPTY in mark_objexts_empty for slabobj_ext

When alloc_slab_obj_exts() fails and then later succeeds in allocating a slab extension vector, it calls handle_failed_objexts_alloc() to mark all objects in the vector as empty. As a result all objects in this slab (slabA) will have their extensions set to CODETAG_EMPTY.

Later on if this slabA is used to allocate a slabobj_ext vector for another slab (slabB), we end up with the slabB->obj_exts pointing to a slabobj_ext vector that itself has a non-NULL slabobj_ext equal to CODETAG_EMPTY. When slabB gets freed, free_slab_obj_exts() is called to free slabB->obj_exts vector.

free_slab_obj_exts() calls mark_objexts_empty(slabB->obj_exts) which will generate a warning because it expects slabobj_ext vectors to have a NULL obj_ext, not CODETAG_EMPTY.

Modify mark_objexts_empty() to skip the warning and setting the obj_ext value if it's already set to CODETAG_EMPTY.

To quickly detect this WARN, I modified the code from WARN_ON(slab_exts[offs].ref.ct) to BUG_ON(slab_exts[offs].ref.ct == 1);

We then obtained this message:

[21630.898561] ------------[ cut here ]------------ [21630.898596] kernel BUG at mm/slub.c:2050! [21630.898611] Internal error: Oops - BUG: 00000000f2000800 [#1] SMP [21630.900372] Modules linked in: squashfs isofs vfio_iommu_type1 vhost_vsock vfio vhost_net vmw_vsock_virtio_transport_common vhost tap v…

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CVE-2025-68199 — codetag: debug: handle existing CODETAG_EMPTY in mark_objexts_empty for slabobj_ext