CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-45944

HighCVSS 7.5
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.13%

3th percentile - higher than 3% of all known CVEs

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the iommu/vt-d driver has a race window when tearing down a context entry, where hardware may fetch a torn entry with the Present bit still set, leading to unpredictable behavior or spurious faults.

Risk Assessment

Potential system instability or spurious IOMMU faults may affect virtual machines and devices using VT-d.

Recommendation

Apply the Linux kernel patch for iommu/vt-d that implements the recommended ownership handshake.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

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Original NVD description (English source)

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: iommu/vt-d: Clear Present bit before tearing down context entry When tearing down a context entry, the current implementation zeros the entire 128-bit entry using multiple 64-bit writes. This creates a window where the hardware can fetch a "torn" entry — where some fields are already zeroed while the 'Present' bit is still set — leading to unpredictable behavior or spurious faults. While x86 provides strong write ordering, the compiler may reorder writes to the two 64-bit halves of the context entry. Even without compiler reordering, the hardware fetch is not guaranteed to be atomic with respect to multiple CPU writes. Align with the "Guidance to Software for Invalidations" in the VT-d spec (Section 6.5.3.3) by implementing the recommended ownership handshake: 1. Clear only the 'Present' (P) bit of the context entry first to signal the transition of ownership from hardware to software. 2. Use dma_wmb() to ensure the cleared bit is visible to the IOMMU. 3. Perform the required cache and context-cache invalidation to ensure hardware no longer has cached references to the entry. 4. Fully zero out the entry only after the invalidation is complete. Also, add a dma_wmb() to context_set_present() to ensure the entry is fully initialized before the 'Present' bit becomes visible.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS