CVE-2025-68171: x86/fpu: Ensure XFD state on signal delivery

Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 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: 2025-12-16 · updated 2026-10-15

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: x86/fpu: Ensure XFD state on signal delivery Sean reported [1] the following splat when running KVM tests: WARNING: CPU: 232 PID: 15391 at xfd_validate_state+0x65/0x70 Call Trace: <TASK> fpu__clear_user_states+0x9c/0x100 arch_do_signal_or_restart+0x142/0x210 exit_to_user_mode_loop+0x55/0x100 do_syscall_64+0x205/0x2c0 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x4b/0x53 Chao further identified [2] a reproducible scenario involving signal delivery: a non-AMX task is preempted by an AMX-enabled task which modifies the XFD MSR. When the non-AMX task resumes and reloads XSTATE with init values, a warning is triggered due to a mismatch between fpstate::xfd and the CPU's current XFD state. fpu__clear_user_states() does not currently re-synchronize the XFD state after such preemption. Invoke xfd_update_state() which detects and corrects the mismatch if there is a dynamic feature. This also benefits the sigreturn path, as fpu__restore_sig() may call fpu__clear_user_states() when the sigframe is inaccessible. [ dhansen: minor changelog munging ]

Affected products

Linux kernel: 5.16 — fixed in 6.18

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.18. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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