What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities
CVE-2024-26990: KVM: x86/mmu: Write-protect L2 SPTEs in TDP MMU when clearing dirty status
- Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
- 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: 2024-05-01 · updated 2026-08-04
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: KVM: x86/mmu: Write-protect L2 SPTEs in TDP MMU when clearing dirty status Check kvm_mmu_page_ad_need_write_protect() when deciding whether to write-protect or clear D-bits on TDP MMU SPTEs, so that the TDP MMU accounts for any role-specific reasons for disabling D-bit dirty logging. Specifically, TDP MMU SPTEs must be write-protected when the TDP MMU is being used to run an L2 (i.e. L1 has disabled EPT) and PML is enabled. KVM always disables PML when running L2, even when L1 and L2 GPAs are in the some domain, so failing to write-protect TDP MMU SPTEs will cause writes made by L2 to not be reflected in the dirty log. [sean: massage shortlog and changelog, tweak ternary op formatting]
Affected products
- Linux kernel: from 6.4 before 6.6.29; from 6.7 before 6.8.8; 6.9-rc1, 6.9-rc2, 6.9-rc3, 6.9-rc4 — fixed in 6.6.29, 6.8.8
How to fix
Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.6.29, 6.8.8. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.
References
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2673dfb591a359c75080dd5af3da484b89320d22
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/cdf811a937471af2d1facdf8ae80e5e68096f1ed
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e20bff0f1b2de9cfe303dd35ff46470104a87404
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2673dfb591a359c75080dd5af3da484b89320d22
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/cdf811a937471af2d1facdf8ae80e5e68096f1ed
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e20bff0f1b2de9cfe303dd35ff46470104a87404
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/4EZ6PJW7VOZ224TD7N4JZNU6KV32ZJ53/
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/DAMSOZXJEPUOXW33WZYWCVAY7Z5S7OOY/
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/GCBZZEC7L7KTWWAS2NLJK6SO3IZIL4WW/
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