Copyright © 2012 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. Moderate 2026-08-15T00:00:00 kernel: mm/compaction: handle free_pages_prepare() properly in compaction_free() 7.0 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H CWE-252

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/compaction: handle free_pages_prepare() properly in compaction_free() free_pages_prepare() can fail but compaction_free() does not handle the failure case. Failed pages should not be added back to cc->freepages for future use, since they can be either PageHWPoison or free_page_is_bad() and might cause data corruption.

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's memory management subsystem, specifically within the `mm/compaction` component. When the `free_pages_prepare()` function fails, the `compaction_free()` function does not properly handle this error. This oversight can lead to pages that are either hardware poisoned (`PageHWPoison`) or otherwise marked as bad (`free_page_is_bad()`) being returned to the free page pool. Consequently, the reuse of these corrupted pages may lead to data corruption within the system.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 Affected kernel Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Out of support scope kernel Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Not affected kernel Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Not affected kernel-rt Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Not affected kernel Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Not affected kernel-rt Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 Not affected kernel Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 Not affected kernel-rt https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-72027 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-72027 https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/2026081511-CVE-2026-72027-4dc2@gregkh/T