Buffer overflow in Linux

CVE-2026-43258

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: alpha: fix user-space corruption during memory compaction Alpha systems can suffer sporadic user-space crashes and heap corruption when memory compaction is enabled. Symptoms include SIGSEGV, glibc allocator failures (e.g. "unaligned tcache chunk"), and compiler internal errors. The failures disappear when compaction is disabled or when using global TLB invalidation. The root cause is insufficient TLB shootdown during page migration. Alpha relies on ASN-based MM context rollover for instruction cache coherency, but this alone is not sufficient to prevent stale data or instruction translations from surviving migration. Fix this by introducing a migration-specific helper that combines: - MM context invalidation (ASN rollover), - immediate per-CPU TLB invalidation (TBI), - synchronous cross-CPU shootdown when required. The helper is used only by migration/compaction paths to avoid changing global TLB semantics. Additionally, update flush_tlb_other(), pte_clear(), to use READ_ONCE()/WRITE_ONCE() for correct SMP memory ordering. This fixes observed crashes on both UP and SMP Alpha systems.

Vulnerability class: Buffer Overflow

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.8 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.002 (6.3th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 6th percentile — 6.3% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2026-43258: held from 0.001 to 0.002.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.001 · newest: 0.002 · change: +0.000

Affected products

  • Linux — versions a48d07afdf18212de22b959715b16793c5a6e57a, 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2, 7.0
  • Linux Kernel — versions 2.6.16

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-43258?
CVE-2026-43258 is a high-severity vulnerability in Linux, classified under Out-of-bounds Write. CVSS score: 7.8/10. Published 2026-05-06.
How severe is CVE-2026-43258?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.8 out of 10.