CVE-2023-54172: x86/hyperv: Disable IBT when hypercall page lacks ENDBR instruction

Severity: unknown
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2025-12-30 · updated 2026-06-17

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: x86/hyperv: Disable IBT when hypercall page lacks ENDBR instruction On hardware that supports Indirect Branch Tracking (IBT), Hyper-V VMs with ConfigVersion 9.3 or later support IBT in the guest. However, current versions of Hyper-V have a bug in that there's not an ENDBR64 instruction at the beginning of the hypercall page. Since hypercalls are made with an indirect call to the hypercall page, all hypercall attempts fail with an exception and Linux panics. A Hyper-V fix is in progress to add ENDBR64. But guard against the Linux panic by clearing X86_FEATURE_IBT if the hypercall page doesn't start with ENDBR. The VM will boot and run without IBT. If future Linux 32-bit kernels were to support IBT, additional hypercall page hackery would be needed to make IBT work for such kernels in a Hyper-V VM.

Affected products

Linux kernel: 5.18 — fixed in 6.5

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.5. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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