CVE-2025-40270 | mm, swap: fix potential UAF issue for VMA readahead

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm, swap: fix potential UAF issue for VMA readahead Since commit 78524b05f1a3 ("mm, swap: avoid redundant swap device pinning"), the common helper for allocating and preparing a folio in the swap cache layer no longer tries to get a swap device reference internally, because all callers of __read_swap_cache_async are already holding a swap entry reference. The repeated swap device pinning isn't needed on the same swap device. Caller of VMA readahead is also holding a reference to the target entry's swap device, but VMA readahead walks the page table, so it might encounter swap entries from other devices, and call __read_swap_cache_async on another device without holding a reference to it. So it is possible to cause a UAF when swapoff of device A raced with swapin on device B, and VMA readahead tries to read swap entries from device A. It's not easy to trigger, but in theory, it could cause real issues. Make VMA readahead try to get the device reference first if the swap device is a different one from the target entry.

Published: 2025-12-06 Last update: 2026-04-15 Assigner: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67 Source: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67

Conclusion & alert: CVE-2025-40270 is rated Low Risk (5.8/100): low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.16%). Mandatory action: Low composite risk—no urgent action required; patch on your normal maintenance cycle and revisit priority if CVSS or EPSS increases.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2025-40270

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2026-06-15 0.02% 0.16% +0.14%
2 2025-12-07 0.02%

Full EPSS history (2 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2025-40270

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

No CVSS data in dataset for this CVE.

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2025-40270

OS Trackers for CVE-2025-40270

vendor priority summary link
debian unimportant CVE-2025-40270 unimportant priority: Debian including 1 source packages (linux), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2025-40270
redhat medium https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2025-40270
suse medium CVE-2025-40270 severity moderate: SUSE including 26 source package names (cluster-md-kmp-default, dlm-kmp-default, …), 269 product×package rows across 54 product lines (SLES-LTSS-TERADATA 15 SP2, SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 15 SP7, … (54 product lines)): Known Not Affected 269. https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2025-40270/
ubuntu medium CVE-2025-40270 medium priority: Ubuntu including 157 source packages (linux, linux-allwinner-5.19, …), 1405 status rows across 9 suites (bionic, focal, jammy, noble, plucky, questing, trusty, upstream, xenial): DNE 1010, ignored 172, not-affected 124, released 97, needed 2. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2025-40270

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2025-40270

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
No affected products in dataset.

References for CVE-2025-40270

cvelogic Threat Intelligence