CVE-2023-53438

x86/MCE: Always save CS register on AMD Zen IF Poison errors

State
Published
Severity
5.5 Medium
Published
Sep 18, 2025
Updated
May 11, 2026
Reserved
Sep 17, 2025

Read the record on cve.org

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

x86/MCE: Always save CS register on AMD Zen IF Poison errors

The Instruction Fetch (IF) units on current AMD Zen-based systems do not guarantee a synchronous #MC is delivered for poison consumption errors. Therefore, MCG_STATUS[EIPV|RIPV] will not be set. However, the microarchitecture does guarantee that the exception is delivered within the same context. In other words, the exact rIP is not known, but the context is known to not have changed.

There is no architecturally-defined method to determine this behavior.

The Code Segment (CS) register is always valid on such IF unit poison errors regardless of the value of MCG_STATUS[EIPV|RIPV].

Add a quirk to save the CS register for poison consumption from the IF unit banks.

This is needed to properly determine the context of the error. Otherwise, the severity grading function will assume the context is IN_KERNEL due to the m->cs value being 0 (the initialized value). This leads to unnecessary kernel panics on data poison errors due to the kernel believing the poison consumption occurred in kernel context.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.15.5 MediumCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HCISA-ADP

Weaknesses

The record names no weakness.

Affected Products

ProductVersions
LinuxLinux
  • 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 to before e6e6a5f50f58fadec397b23064b7e4830292863dAffected
  • 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 to before 6eac3965901489ae114a664a78cd2d1415d1af5cAffected
  • 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 to before 2e01bdf7203c383e9d8489d9f963c52d6c81e4dbAffected
  • 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 to before 4240e2ebe67941ce2c4f5c866c3af4b5ac7a0c67Affected
LinuxLinux
  • 2.6.12Affected
  • before 2.6.12Not affected
  • 6.1.53 through 6.1.*Not affected
  • 6.4.16 through 6.4.*Not affected
  • 6.5.3 through 6.5.*Not affected
  • 6.6 and laterNot affected

References

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