What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities
CVE-2021-3656
- Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
- Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
- EPSS: 0.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
- Public exploit or detection template: none known
- Published: 2022-03-04 · updated 2026-06-17
- Weakness: CWE-862
Description
A flaw was found in the KVM's AMD code for supporting SVM nested virtualization. The flaw occurs when processing the VMCB (virtual machine control block) provided by the L1 guest to spawn/handle a nested guest (L2). Due to improper validation of the "virt_ext" field, this issue could allow a malicious L1 to disable both VMLOAD/VMSAVE intercepts and VLS (Virtual VMLOAD/VMSAVE) for the L2 guest. As a result, the L2 guest would be allowed to read/write physical pages of the host, resulting in a crash of the entire system, leak of sensitive data or potential guest-to-host escape.
Affected products
- Fedoraproject Fedora: 33, 34
- Linux kernel: from 4.13 before 4.14.245; from 4.15 before 4.19.205; from 4.20 before 5.4.142; from 5.5 before 5.10.60; from 5.11 before 5.13.12; 5.14, 5.14-rc1, 5.14-rc2, 5.14-rc3, 5.14-rc4, 5.14-rc5 (+1) — fixed in 4.14.245, 4.19.205, 5.10.60, 5.13.12, 5.4.142
- Red Hat 3scale API Management Platform 2: 2.0
- RedHat Codeready Linux Builder: all versions
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux: 8.0
- RedHat Enterprise Linux Desktop: 7.0
- RedHat Enterprise Linux Eus: 8.1, 8.2, 8.4
- RedHat Enterprise Linux For Ibm Z Systems: 7.0, 8.0
- RedHat Enterprise Linux For Ibm Z Systems Eus: 8.1, 8.2, 8.4
- RedHat Enterprise Linux For Power Big Endian: 7.0
- RedHat Enterprise Linux For Power Little Endian: 7.0, 8.0
- RedHat Enterprise Linux For Power Little Endian Eus: 8.1, 8.2, 8.4
- RedHat Enterprise Linux For Real Time: 7, 8
- RedHat Enterprise Linux For Real Time For Nfv: 7, 8
- RedHat Enterprise Linux For Real Time For Nfv Tus: 8.2, 8.4
- RedHat Enterprise Linux For Real Time Tus: 8.2, 8.4
- RedHat Enterprise Linux For Scientific Computing: 7.0
- RedHat Enterprise Linux Server: 7.0
- RedHat Enterprise Linux Server Aus: 7.6, 7.7, 8.2, 8.4
- RedHat Enterprise Linux Server For Power Little Endian Update Services For Sap Solutions: 7.6, 8.1, 8.2, 8.4
- RedHat Enterprise Linux Server Tus: 7.6, 7.7, 8.2, 8.4
- RedHat Enterprise Linux Server Update Services For Sap Solutions: 7.6, 7.7, 8.1, 8.2, 8.4
- RedHat Enterprise Linux Workstation: 7.0
- OpenStack: 13
- RedHat Software Collections: all versions
- RedHat Virtualization Host: 4.0
How to fix
Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 4.14.245, 4.19.205, 5.10.60, 5.13.12. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.
References
- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1983988
- https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/virt/kvm/kvm.git/commit/?id=c7dfa4009965a9b2d7b329ee970eb8da0d32f0bc
- https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/c7dfa4009965a9b2d7b329ee970eb8da0d32f0bc
- https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2021/08/16/1
- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1983988
- https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/virt/kvm/kvm.git/commit/?id=c7dfa4009965a9b2d7b329ee970eb8da0d32f0bc
- https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/c7dfa4009965a9b2d7b329ee970eb8da0d32f0bc
- https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2021/08/16/1
Get alerted when CVE-2021-3656 or the next vulnerability affects your stack