CVE-2025-22013
KVM: arm64: Unconditionally save+flush host FPSIMD/SVE/SME state
- State
- Published
- Severity
- 7.3 High
- Published
- Apr 8, 2025
- Updated
- Oct 15, 2026
- Reserved
- Dec 29, 2024
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
KVM: arm64: Unconditionally save+flush host FPSIMD/SVE/SME state
There are several problems with the way hyp code lazily saves the host's FPSIMD/SVE state, including:
* Host SVE being discarded unexpectedly due to inconsistent configuration of TIF_SVE and CPACR_ELx.ZEN. This has been seen to result in QEMU crashes where SVE is used by memmove(), as reported by Eric Auger:
https://issues.redhat.com/browse/RHEL-68997
* Host SVE state is discarded *after* modification by ptrace, which was an unintentional ptrace ABI change introduced with lazy discarding of SVE state.
* The host FPMR value can be discarded when running a non-protected VM, where FPMR support is not exposed to a VM, and that VM uses FPSIMD/SVE. In these cases the hyp code does not save the host's FPMR before unbinding the host's FPSIMD/SVE/SME state, leaving a stale value in memory.
Avoid these by eagerly saving and "flushing" the host's FPSIMD/SVE/SME state when loading a vCPU such that KVM does not need to save any of the host's FPSIMD/SVE/SME state. For clarity, fpsimd_kvm_prepare() is removed and the necessary call to fpsimd_save_and_flush_cpu_state() is placed in kvm_arch_vcpu_load_fp(). As 'fpsimd_state' and 'fpmr_ptr' should not be used, they are set to NULL; all uses of these will be removed in subsequent patches.
Historical problems go back at least as far as v5.17, e.g. erroneous assumptions about TIF_SVE being clear in commit:
8383741ab2e773a9 ("KVM: arm64: Get rid of host SVE tracking/saving")
... and so this eager save+flush probably needs to be backported to ALL stable trees.
Scores
| CVSS | Score | Vector | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3.1 | 7.3 High | CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:H/A:H | Linux |
Weaknesses
The record names no weakness.
Affected Products
| Product | Versions |
|---|---|
LinuxLinux |
|
LinuxLinux |
|
References
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/5289ac43b69c61a49c75720921f2008005a31c43
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/04c50cc23a492c4d43fdaefc7c1ecc0ff6f7b82e
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/806d5c1e1d2e5502175a24bf70f251648d99c36a
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/79e140bba70bcacc5fe15bf8c0b958793fd7d56f
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/900b444be493b7f404898c785d6605b177a093d0
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/fbc7e61195e23f744814e78524b73b59faa54ab4
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