KVM: x86/mmu: Only WARN in direct MMUs when overwriting shadow-present SPTE

Summary

CVECVE-2026-23402
StatePUBLISHED
AssignerLinux
Source PriorityCVE Program / NVD first with legacy fallback
Published2026-04-01 09:16:15 UTC
Updated2026-04-01 14:23:37 UTC
DescriptionIn the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: KVM: x86/mmu: Only WARN in direct MMUs when overwriting shadow-present SPTE Adjust KVM's sanity check against overwriting a shadow-present SPTE with a another SPTE with a different target PFN to only apply to direct MMUs, i.e. only to MMUs without shadowed gPTEs. While it's impossible for KVM to overwrite a shadow-present SPTE in response to a guest write, writes from outside the scope of KVM, e.g. from host userspace, aren't detected by KVM's write tracking and so can break KVM's shadow paging rules. ------------[ cut here ]------------ pfn != spte_to_pfn(*sptep) WARNING: arch/x86/kvm/mmu/mmu.c:3069 at mmu_set_spte+0x1e4/0x440 [kvm], CPU#0: vmx_ept_stale_r/872 Modules linked in: kvm_intel kvm irqbypass CPU: 0 UID: 1000 PID: 872 Comm: vmx_ept_stale_r Not tainted 7.0.0-rc2-eafebd2d2ab0-sink-vm #319 PREEMPT Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS 0.0.0 02/06/2015 RIP: 0010:mmu_set_spte+0x1e4/0x440 [kvm] Call Trace: <TASK> ept_page_fault+0x535/0x7f0 [kvm] kvm_mmu_do_page_fault+0xee/0x1f0 [kvm] kvm_mmu_page_fault+0x8d/0x620 [kvm] vmx_handle_exit+0x18c/0x5a0 [kvm_intel] kvm_arch_vcpu_ioctl_run+0xc55/0x1c20 [kvm] kvm_vcpu_ioctl+0x2d5/0x980 [kvm] __x64_sys_ioctl+0x8a/0xd0 do_syscall_64+0xb5/0x730 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x4b/0x53 </TASK> ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]---

Risk And Classification

EPSS: 0.000180000 probability, percentile 0.047170000 (date 2026-04-01)

Vendor Declared Affected Products

SourceVendorProductVersionPlatforms
CNA Linux Linux affected 11d45175111d933c5175acc28e56af2213dd5cd6 df83746075778958954aa0460cca55f4b3fc9c02 git Not specified
CNA Linux Linux affected 6.16 Not specified
CNA Linux Linux unaffected 6.16 semver Not specified
CNA Linux Linux unaffected 7.0-rc6 * original_commit_for_fix Not specified

References

ReferenceSourceLinkTags
git.kernel.org/stable/c/df83746075778958954aa0460cca55f4b3fc9c02 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67 git.kernel.org
CVE Program record CVE.ORG www.cve.org canonical
NVD vulnerability detail NVD nvd.nist.gov canonical, analysis
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