CVE-2026-98471 PUBLISHED

KVM: SEV: Do cache maintenance on the source VM during intra-host migration

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 25.09.2026 Published: 18.10.2026 Updated: 18.10.2026

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

KVM: SEV: Do cache maintenance on the source VM during intra-host migration

Manually perform cache maintenance on the source VM during intra-host migration to ensure no stale data is left in CPU caches after the VM is destroyed. Because the source VM is "converted" to a non-SEV VM, KVM's memory reclaim flows won't trigger cache maintenance, e.g. when all guest memory is reclaimed in response to detaching from the mmu_notifier.

Note, relying on the destination VM to do cache maintenance isn't an option as KVM doesn't require identical guest memory configurations, i.e. the source VM may have access to memory that the destination VM does not. Enforcing equivalent memory configurations is infeasible, as it would require a deep comparison of memslots, e.g. to verify that not only are the memslot identical, but what the memslots point at is also identical.

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from b56639318bb2be66aceba92836279714488709b4 to 37dfb676fafd1eef36fe0bb649607afbb0d5521b (excl.)
  • affected from b56639318bb2be66aceba92836279714488709b4 to d4cc2dff12116a700add601c0262132cc26e1b2c (excl.)
  • affected from b56639318bb2be66aceba92836279714488709b4 to 93de2a6a4b91b72607136dd656edf03fb399d27f (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 5.16 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 5.16 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 6.18.55 to 6.18.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.2.9 to 7.2.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.3-rc5 to * (incl.)

References