CVE-2026-19574
ARM64 MMU can assign an in-use ASID to a new memory domain, breaking user-mode memory isolation
- State
- Published
- Severity
- 7.0 High
- Published
- Oct 9, 2026
- Updated
- Oct 9, 2026
- Reserved
- Aug 11, 2026
Description
The ARM64 MMU back-end allocated address space identifiers (ASIDs) for memory domains with a bare round-robin counter in arch_mem_domain_init() (arch/arm64/core/mmu.c). VM_ASID_BITS is 8, so only 255 ASIDs exist; once the counter wrapped, arch_mem_domain_init() could hand an ASID to a new domain while a still-live domain held the same one. Domain-private mappings are installed non-global (MT_NG), so the ASID is the only tag separating one domain's cached translations from another's in the TLB.
The context-switch path in z_arm64_swap_ptables() only flushes the TLB when the outgoing and incoming domains carry the same ASID, which does not cover a duplicate reached through a third domain: for domains A and C sharing an ASID and an unrelated domain B, the schedule A -> B -> C never takes the flush branch, so the ASID-tagged entries A populated remain resident while C runs. Under SMP two live domains sharing an ASID can additionally be resident on two CPUs at once, which the architecture does not allow for distinct translation-table sets.
Triggering the wrap requires a CONFIG_USERSPACE application on ARM64 that creates more than 255 memory domains over its lifetime; k_mem_domain_init() and k_mem_domain_deinit() are supervisor-only APIs and are not exposed as syscalls, so an unprivileged thread cannot drive the counter directly. Once two live domains alias, however, a user-mode thread in one domain can read and write memory belonging to the other domain's partitions and thread stacks with that domain's permissions, defeating the memory-domain isolation boundary.
The fix scans the live domain_list before assigning an ASID, advances the round-robin counter past ASIDs already in use, and returns -ENOMEM when all are taken, so domain creation fails closed instead of silently aliasing.
Scores
| CVSS | Score | Vector | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3.1 | 7.0 High | CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H | zephyr |
Weaknesses
- CWE-284 auth
Affected Products
| Product | Versions |
|---|---|
zephyrzephyrproject |
|
References
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