CVE-2026-23554

Use after free of paging structures in EPT

State
Published
Severity
7.8 High
Published
Mar 23, 2026
Updated
Mar 23, 2026
Reserved
Jan 14, 2026

Read the record on cve.org

Description

The Intel EPT paging code uses an optimization to defer flushing of any cached EPT state until the p2m lock is dropped, so that multiple modifications done under the same locked region only issue a single flush.

Freeing of paging structures however is not deferred until the flushing is done, and can result in freed pages transiently being present in cached state. Such stale entries can point to memory ranges not owned by the guest, thus allowing access to unintended memory regions.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.17.8 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:HCISA-ADP

Weaknesses

  • CWE-367 Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race Condition

Affected Products

ProductVersions
XenXen
  • consult Xen advisory XSA-480Unknown

References

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