CVE-2024-50182: In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: secretmem: disable memfd_secret() if arch cannot se
Summary
A Linux kernel vulnerability (CVE-2024-50182) affected memfd_secret(), a system call that creates secret memory regions hidden from the kernel's direct map (a lookup table for physical memory). On some ARM64 systems, the function appeared to work but silently failed to actually hide the memory, defeating its security purpose. The fix makes memfd_secret() return an error code (-ENOSYS) on systems that cannot properly remove memory from the direct map, rather than silently failing.
Solution / Mitigation
Return -ENOSYS from memfd_secret() syscall if !can_set_direct_map(). The patch disables the syscall on ARM64 systems with certain configuration options disabled (CONFIG_RODATA_FULL_DEFAULT_ENABLED=n, CONFIG_DEBUG_PAGEALLOC=n, and CONFIG_KFENCE=n) where the operation cannot work correctly.
Vulnerability Details
5.5(medium)
EPSS: 0.0%
Classification
Original source: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2024-50182
First tracked: February 15, 2026 at 08:35 PM
Classified by LLM (prompt v3) · confidence: 95%