Bug 2555118 (CVE-2026-98718)

Summary: CVE-2026-98718 kernel: KVM: SEV: Do cache maintenance on the source VM *before* clearing SEV state
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: high Docs Contact:
Priority: high    
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 KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) subsystem supporting AMD SEV (Secure Encrypted Virtualization). During virtual machine migration on the same host, CPU cache maintenance was performed after deactivating the source guest's encryption state instead of before. This timing window allows concurrent host memory reclaim operations to reallocate guest memory pages before caches are flushed. As a result, subsequent delayed cache writebacks can overwrite newly allocated memory with stale guest data, leading to memory corruption and host system instability.
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-10-18 15:55:28 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

KVM: SEV: Do cache maintenance on the source VM *before* clearing SEV state

Explicitly flush caches after intra-host migration before clearing "SEV
active" on the source VM, as doing cache maintenance afterwards creates a
tiny window where memory reclaim could return memory to the host without
performing a cache flush, e.g. as pointed out by Sashiko:

  CPU1 in sev_migrate_from():
    src->active = false;

  CPU2 running concurrent unmap:
    Since active is false, the automatic cache flush in
    sev_guest_memory_reclaimed is skipped.
    The host frees and reallocates the page.

  CPU1 in sev_migrate_from():
    sev_writeback_caches(src_kvm);
    Executes a hardware cache flush (wbnoinvd), which writes the guest's old
    dirty ciphertext over the new page owner's data.