[PATCH v2] userfaultfd: validate the whole range before changing write protection

From: Umang Pokhriyal

Date: Wed Nov 04 2026 - 04:41:45 EST


mwriteprotect_range() checks each VMA as it walks the range. When a later
VMA is not registered for write protection, or is a hugetlb VMA the range
is not aligned to, the call fails after the earlier VMAs were already
changed. When unprotecting, userfaultfd_writeprotect() then skips
wake_userfault(), so threads blocked on those pages are not woken although
the pages are writable again.

An unprivileged process can trigger this with a range that spans an
unregistered VMA. It hasn't been seen in practice; it was found while
reviewing the userfaultfd range ioctls with an LLM.

Validate the whole range first, as mrwprotect_range() already does.

Fixes: a1b92a3f1498 ("mm/userfaultfd: support WP on multiple VMAs")
Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Signed-off-by: Umang Pokhriyal <umangpokhriyall@xxxxxxxxx>
---
v2:
- drop the redundant error assignments in the validation loop (Mike)
- drop the selftest (Mike)

v1: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20261102103621.156928-1-umangpokhriyall@xxxxxxxxx/

mm/userfaultfd.c | 21 +++++++++++++--------
1 file changed, 13 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)

diff --git a/mm/userfaultfd.c b/mm/userfaultfd.c
index 87da92526..1b7320d0a 100644
--- a/mm/userfaultfd.c
+++ b/mm/userfaultfd.c
@@ -1105,21 +1105,26 @@ static int mwriteprotect_range(struct userfaultfd_ctx *ctx, unsigned long start,
if (atomic_read(&ctx->mmap_changing))
goto out_unlock;

+ /*
+ * Validate every spanned VMA before changing any of them, so an
+ * invalid range is rejected without changing part of it.
+ */
err = -ENOENT;
for_each_vma_range(vmi, dst_vma, end) {
-
- if (!userfaultfd_wp(dst_vma)) {
- err = -ENOENT;
- break;
- }
+ if (!userfaultfd_wp(dst_vma))
+ goto out_unlock;

if (vma_is_hugetlb(dst_vma)) {
- err = -EINVAL;
page_mask = vma_kernel_pagesize(dst_vma) - 1;
- if ((start & page_mask) || (len & page_mask))
- break;
+ if ((start & page_mask) || (len & page_mask)) {
+ err = -EINVAL;
+ goto out_unlock;
+ }
}
+ }

+ vma_iter_set(&vmi, start);
+ for_each_vma_range(vmi, dst_vma, end) {
_start = max(dst_vma->vm_start, start);
_end = min(dst_vma->vm_end, end);


base-commit: 74d73ffcffe03804f97e9fb82301dadf75671282
--
2.53.0