Bug 2536619 (CVE-2026-90212)

Summary: CVE-2026-90212 kernel: arm64/efi: Avoid voluntary preemption with efi_mm installed
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedCC: akhatavk, aos-team-art-private, asdas, dpaolell, jdelft, jupierce, lgarciaa, mbiarnes, ppalepu, ppostler, prdhamdh, rhel-process-autobot, sghai, sidsharm, suppawar, vlaad, watson-tool-maintainers
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's arm64 EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) implementation. When software PAN (Privileged Access Never) is enabled, the system can experience a bad kernel memory access. This occurs due to incorrect handling of the TTBR0_EL1 register during voluntary preemption within the fpsimd context management code. A local attacker or specific system conditions could trigger this, leading to a kernel crash and a denial of service.
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-09-17 18:53:42 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

arm64/efi: Avoid voluntary preemption with efi_mm installed

Gus reports a bad kernel memory access when using software PAN
(CONFIG_ARM64_SW_TTBR0_PAN=y) on a machine with support for EFI runtime
services:

  Unable to handle kernel access to user memory outside uaccess routines
    at virtual address 00000000f322ff30
  Mem abort info:
    ESR = 0x0000000096000004
    FSC = 0x04: level 0 translation fault
  Internal error: Oops: 0000000096000004 [#1]  SMP
  Workqueue: efi_rts_wq efi_call_rts
  pstate: 80400005 (Nzcv daif +PAN -UAO -TCO -DIT -SSBS BTYPE=--)
  pc : efi_call_rts+0xd8/0x288
  Call trace:
   efi_call_rts+0xd8/0x288 (P)
   process_one_work+0x178/0x4f8
   worker_thread+0x194/0x328

This is because the fpsimd context management code called from
__efi_fpsimd_begin() can preempt voluntarily, returning later to the EFI
code with an incorrect value for TTBR0_EL1 thanks to the deferred mm
switching used by the software PAN implementation.

Since EFI runtime services cannot preempt voluntarily and because the
fpsimd switching code does not rely on the TTBR0_EL1 mappings, simply
reorder the fpsimd switch so that it occurs before we change the
page-table.