CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-89915

CriticalCVSS 9.3
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the global VNCR mapping counter in KVM arm64 was removed. This counter was used to decide whether a TLB invalidation was needed, but it had flaws: checking it could cause missed TLB invalidations, and an L1 vcpu invalidating its own TLB would not invalidate the VNCR pseudo TLB. Since it failed to provide required guarantees, it was removed entirely.

Risk Assessment

Missed TLB invalidations can cause incorrect address translation in the guest VM and potential hypervisor faults. It affects KVM on arm64 environments.

Recommendation

Update the Linux kernel to a version containing the fix. Monitor kernel logs for KVM arm64 related errors.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

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Original NVD description (English source)

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: KVM: arm64: Remove VM-wide VNCR mapping counter The global VNCR mapping counter is used to decide whether an L1 provided VNCR page is mapped in L0 on any CPU at the point of dealing with a TLB invalidation. It is incremented when a mapping is made in the fixmap, and decremented when unmapped. As it turns out, this tracking has several flaws: - we are trying to invalidate TLBs, and the mapping is only an opportunistic consequence of the TLB. Checking this counter to decide whether a TLB needs to be invalidated may result in missed invalidations. - an L1 vcpu invalidating its own TLB (a very likely case) will not succeed in invalidating the VNCR pseudo TLB because that page is not mapped in L0 at this stage. Given that this tracking fails at delivering the minimum guarantees that are required and is only a performance optimisation, remove it completely.

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