CVE-2026-64561 PUBLISHED

KVM: x86: Check for invalid/obsolete root *after* making MMU pages available

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 19.07.2026 Published: 04.08.2026 Updated: 04.08.2026

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

KVM: x86: Check for invalid/obsolete root after making MMU pages available

Check for a "stale" page fault, i.e. for an invalid and/or obsolete root, after making MMU pages available for the shadow MMU. If reclaiming shadow pages zaps an in-use root, i.e. marks it invalid, then KVM will attempt to map memory into an invalid root. On its own, populating an invalid root is "fine", but because child shadow pages inherit their parent's role, any children created during the map/fetch will be created as invalid pages, thus violating KVM's invariant that invalid pages are never on the list of active MMU pages.

Note, the underlying flaw has existed since KVM first started tracking invalid roots in 2008 (commit 2e53d63acba7, "KVM: MMU: ignore zapped root pagetables"), but the true badness only came along in 2020 (Linux 5.9) with the invariant that invalid shadow pages can't be on the list of active pages.

Note #2, inheriting role.invalid when creating child shadow pages is also far from ideal; that flaw will be addressed separately.

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from f95eec9bed76d42194c23153cb1cc8f186bf91cb to 35e77467610c4a37cb0ff54ee56b85f73b1f5700 (excl.)
  • affected from f95eec9bed76d42194c23153cb1cc8f186bf91cb to 0026dbb7de8ea76e97d6edf42fc3cc084564e2bf (excl.)
  • affected from f95eec9bed76d42194c23153cb1cc8f186bf91cb to f3477a6a4164f15287444eda685b5f6405dbd1e5 (excl.)
  • affected from f95eec9bed76d42194c23153cb1cc8f186bf91cb to bce0d3c26e2c761a4bf43c8949f333fc7374eb2d (excl.)
  • affected from f95eec9bed76d42194c23153cb1cc8f186bf91cb to 2abd5287f08319fa35764566b15c6e22cb1068db (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 5.9 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 5.9 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 6.6.148 to 6.6.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.12.101 to 6.12.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.18.42 to 6.18.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.1.6 to 7.1.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.2-rc5 to * (incl.)

References