CVE-2026-99000
NoneCVSS
—
EPSS
0.2%
Published
Oct 23, 2026
CISA due date
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Cloudanix analysis
A driver bug can make the operating system repeatedly try to free far more memory than actually available, causing slowdowns or crashes when the computer is already low on RAM.
- Exploitation
- Other
- Attacker needs
- Local User
- Complexity
- Moderate
- Impact
- Denial Of Service
- Component
- OS kernel
- Class
- Other
- Remediation
- Patch
- Effort
- Medium
- Patch risk
- Low
What it actually does
Nested xe_bo_pin_external calls on external dma-buf objects invoke shrinker accounting subtract/add unconditionally instead of only on pin-count transitions, causing signed-to-unsigned underflow that inflates reported shrinkable page counts and triggers excessive shrinker activity; a secondary path affects imported dma-bufs whose pages were never added.
Why it matters to the business
Under memory pressure, affected Linux systems with Xe graphics may suffer repeated aggressive memory reclamation, leading to performance degradation, application stalls, or instability; the issue is newly public and affects recent kernels.
How an attack unfolds
An attacker with local access performs graphics operations that create multiple attachments or importers on the same external buffer object, driving xe_bo_pin_external through the fb-pin or direct paths repeatedly; each nested pin further underflows shrinker counts until the driver invokes the shrinker excessively on every memory-pressure event.
How to fix it
Upgrade the Linux kernel to a version containing the referenced fix that centralizes accounting behind pin-count transition checks and skips imported dma-bufs; apply the patch series that also addresses the fb-pin path leak.
How to confirm the fix worked
Confirm the presence of xe_bo_account_pin / xe_bo_account_unpin helpers and the EXTERNAL && !EXTERNAL_MAPPABLE guard in xe_ttm_tt_populate; run targeted pin/unpin stress tests while monitoring xe_shrinker_count values for monotonic behavior.
Typical attack path
- Obtain local unprivileged access on a Linux system using the Xe driver
- Create or import dma-buf objects with multiple concurrent attachments
- Trigger repeated xe_bo_pin_external calls via graphics or framebuffer operations
- Induce memory pressure to force shrinker invocation
- Observe or amplify system-wide reclamation storms
How to detect it
Inspect kernel logs for unusually high shrinker invocation counts or anomalous xe_shrinker_count values; correlate with graphics buffer pin/unpin activity in ftrace or perf; review for sudden spikes in memory-reclamation CPU time on Xe hardware.
What your security team should do
- Prioritize kernel updates on all Xe-equipped systems within the next 7 days
- Monitor memory-pressure events and shrinker invocation rates in production workloads
- Restrict untrusted local graphics workloads until patches are deployed
The record
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: drm/xe: Fix shrinker accounting double-subtraction on nested external pins xe_bo_pin_external() and xe_bo_unpin_external() support nested pins, since the underlying ttm_bo_pin()/ttm_bo_unpin() maintain a pin_count refcount rather than a boolean. However, the shrinker accounting calls xe_ttm_tt_account_subtract() and xe_ttm_tt_account_add() are invoked unconditionally on every pin_external()/unpin_external() call, instead of only on the transition into and out of the pinned state. An external BO (dma-buf) can be pinned more than once while already pinned, for example when it has multiple attachments/importers, each independently calling xe_bo_pin_external(). Each such nested pin subtracts the BO's pages from the shrinker's accounting again, even though the BO's pages were already removed from consideration by the first pin. Symmetrically, each nested unpin adds them back again before the BO is actually unpinned. This desynchronizes the shrinker's page and object counts from reality, and since they are declared as signed long but interpreted as unsigned long in xe_shrinker_count(), the underflow can turn into an enormous shrinkable/purgeable page count, causing the shrinker to be invoked excessively under memory pressure. Guard the accounting calls with the same pin-count transition checks already used to guard the pinned_link list maintenance, so accounting is only updated on the outermost pin and the final unpin. While centralizing this logic into xe_bo_account_pin()/ xe_bo_account_unpin(), also close a second, related accounting gap affecting imported dma-bufs. For an imported bo's ttm_tt, xe's ttm_tt_populate hook (xe_ttm_tt_populate()) early-returns without calling xe_ttm_tt_account_add(), since TTM_TT_FLAG_EXTERNAL is set without TTM_TT_FLAG_EXTERNAL_MAPPABLE. However, TTM core's ttm_tt_populate() wrapper unconditionally marks the tt as populated on driver-hook success, so ttm_tt_is_populated() still reports true for it. xe_bo_account_pin()/xe_bo_account_unpin() trusted ttm_tt_is_populated() as a proxy for "these pages are accounted for by the shrinker", and would subtract/add pages for such a tt that were never added in the first place, again underflowing the shrinker's counts. This is reachable today via xe_bo_pin_external(), and would have become newly reachable via the fb-pin path once this patch routes __xe_pin_fb_vma() through xe_bo_pin_account() below, so fix it here rather than in a later patch, to avoid a commit in this series that introduces the regression before fixing it. Skip the accounting for imported bos, using the same EXTERNAL && !EXTERNAL_MAPPABLE test xe_ttm_tt_populate()/xe_ttm_tt_unpopulate() use to decide whether to act, via a new xe_ttm_bo_is_imported() helper (hoisted up from its only prior use site). v2: - Fix the critical issue caught by Sashiko AI review: the pin-count transition check introduced here was still bypassed by the fb-pin path (__xe_pin_fb_vma()/__xe_unpin_fb_vma()), which could leave a stale pinned_link entry and a permanent shrinker accounting leak when the fb-unpin performed the true last unpin. Addressed in a separate follow-up patch in this series rather than folded in here, since it is a distinct bug with its own Fixes: tag. - Drop the unneeded local "last_unpin" variable in xe_bo_unpin_external(), restoring the original inline bo->ttm.pin_count == 1 check; it was a no-op rename not used by any of the new accounting helpers, and was going to be deleted again by the follow-up patch anyway. v3: - Exclude imported dma-bufs from the pin/unpin shrinker accounting, fixing another underflow caught by Sashiko AI review. - Add a short comment on the backup-object pin site noting it's already populated/accounted at pin time, addressing (as a false-positive clarification, no code fix needed) a separate Medium-severity accounting-leak concern also caught by Sashiko AI ---truncated---
Affected packages
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