Bug 2507141 (CVE-2026-64457)

Summary: CVE-2026-64457 kernel: virtio_pci: fix vq info pointer lookup via wrong index
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
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Priority: low    
Version: unspecifiedCC: rhel-process-autobot, watson-tool-maintainers
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's virtio_pci component. A local user with permissions to unbind a virtio balloon device can trigger a NULL pointer dereference. This occurs due to an indexing mismatch when the vp_del_vqs() function attempts to look up virtqueue information, leading to an access of a NULL entry. Successful exploitation of this vulnerability can lead to a system crash, resulting in a Denial of Service (DoS).
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-07-25 10:07:11 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

virtio_pci: fix vq info pointer lookup via wrong index

Unbinding a virtio balloon device:

    echo virtio0 > /sys/bus/virtio/drivers/virtio_balloon/unbind

triggers a NULL pointer dereference. The dmesg says:

    BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000008
    [...]
    RIP: 0010:__list_del_entry_valid_or_report+0x5/0xf0
    Call Trace:
    <TASK>
    vp_del_vqs+0x121/0x230
    remove_common+0x135/0x150
    virtballoon_remove+0xee/0x100
    virtio_dev_remove+0x3b/0x80
    device_release_driver_internal+0x187/0x2c0
    unbind_store+0xb9/0xe0
    kernfs_fop_write_iter.llvm.11660790530567441834+0xf6/0x180
    vfs_write+0x2a9/0x3b0
    ksys_write+0x5c/0xd0
    do_syscall_64+0x54/0x230
    entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x29/0x31
    [...]
    </TASK>

The virtio_balloon device registers 5 queues (inflate, deflate, stats,
free_page, reporting) but only the first two are unconditional. The
stats, free_page and reporting queues are each conditional on their
respective feature bits. When any of these features are absent, the
corresponding vqs_info entry has name == NULL, creating holes in the
array.

The root cause is an indexing mismatch introduced when vq info storage
was changed to be passed as an argument. vp_find_vqs_msix() and
vp_find_vqs_intx() store the info pointer at vp_dev->vqs[i], where 'i'
is the caller's sparse array index. However, the virtqueue itself gets
vq->index assigned from queue_idx, a dense index that skips NULL
entries. When holes exist, 'i' and queue_idx diverge. Later,
vp_del_vqs() looks up info via vp_dev->vqs[vq->index] using the dense
index into the sparsely-populated array, and hits NULL.

Fix this by storing info at vp_dev->vqs[queue_idx] instead of
vp_dev->vqs[i], so the store index matches the lookup index
(vq->index). Apply the fix to both the MSIX and INTX paths.

Comment 1 Mauro Matteo Cascella 2026-08-02 13:43:26 UTC
Upstream advisory:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/2026072542-CVE-2026-64457-9f4a@gregkh/T