CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-98471

HighCVSS 7.1
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.20%

9th percentile - higher than 9% of all known CVEs

Summary

In the Linux kernel, KVM SEV did not manually perform cache maintenance on the source VM during intra-host migration. After the source VM was destroyed, stale data could remain in CPU caches because KVM's memory reclaim flows would not trigger cache maintenance.

Risk Assessment

Stale data left in CPU caches after destroying an SEV VM may lead to guest data leakage or a breach of isolation between virtual machines.

Recommendation

Update the Linux kernel to a version containing the fix that manually performs cache maintenance on the source VM during intra-host migration.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

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Original NVD description (English source)

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: KVM: SEV: Do cache maintenance on the source VM during intra-host migration Manually perform cache maintenance on the source VM during intra-host migration to ensure no stale data is left in CPU caches after the VM is destroyed. Because the source VM is "converted" to a non-SEV VM, KVM's memory reclaim flows won't trigger cache maintenance, e.g. when all guest memory is reclaimed in response to detaching from the mmu_notifier. Note, relying on the destination VM to do cache maintenance isn't an option as KVM doesn't require identical guest memory configurations, i.e. the source VM may have access to memory that the destination VM does not. Enforcing equivalent memory configurations is infeasible, as it would require a *deep* comparison of memslots, e.g. to verify that not only are the memslot identical, but what the memslots point at is also identical.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS