CVEvulnerability
CVE-2026-23425
5.5 MEDIUM
Official page ↗
- Status
- Modified
- Published
- 2026-04-03
- Last modified
- 2026-07-21
- Assigner
- 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
- CVSS 3.1 (416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67)
- 8.8 HIGH — CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
- CVSS 3.1 ([email protected])
- 5.5 MEDIUM — CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
KVM: arm64: Fix ID register initialization for non-protected pKVM guests
In protected mode, the hypervisor maintains a separate instance of
the `kvm` structure for each VM. For non-protected VMs, this structure is
initialized from the host's `kvm` state.
Currently, `pkvm_init_features_from_host()` copies the
`KVM_ARCH_FLAG_ID_REGS_INITIALIZED` flag from the host without the
underlying `id_regs` data being initialized. This results in the
hypervisor seeing the flag as set while the ID registers remain zeroed.
Consequently, `kvm_has_feat()` checks at EL2 fail (return 0) for
non-protected VMs. This breaks logic that relies on feature detection,
such as `ctxt_has_tcrx()` for TCR2_EL1 support. As a result, certain
system registers (e.g., TCR2_EL1, PIR_EL1, POR_EL1) are not
saved/restored during the world switch, which could lead to state
corruption.
Fix this by explicitly copying the ID registers from the host `kvm` to
the hypervisor `kvm` for non-protected VMs during initialization, since
we trust the host with its non-protected guests' features. Also ensure
`KVM_ARCH_FLAG_ID_REGS_INITIALIZED` is cleared initially in
`pkvm_init_features_from_host` so that `vm_copy_id_regs` can properly
initialize them and set the flag once done.
Affected configurations
• linux linux kernel (>= 6.14.1 < 6.18.17)
• linux linux kernel (>= 6.19 < 6.19.7)
• linux linux kernel 6.14
• linux linux kernel 7.0