Bug 2516816 (CVE-2026-74439) - CVE-2026-74439 kernel: iommu/vt-d: Clear Present bit before tearing down scalable-mode context entry
Summary: CVE-2026-74439 kernel: iommu/vt-d: Clear Present bit before tearing down scal...
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: CVE-2026-74439
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Product Security DevOps Team
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2026-08-15 06:34 UTC by OSIDB Bzimport
Modified: 2026-08-20 23:29 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-08-15 06:34:59 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

iommu/vt-d: Clear Present bit before tearing down scalable-mode context entry

device_pasid_table_teardown() zeroes the 128-bit scalable-mode context
entry with context_clear_entry() while the Present bit is still set. This
creates a window where the hardware can fetch a torn entry, with some
fields already zeroed while Present is still set, leading to unpredictable
behavior or spurious faults. The context-cache invalidation is issued only
after the entry has been zeroed, and intel_pasid_free_table() then frees
the PASID directory pages, so the IOMMU can keep walking a stale Present=1
entry that points at freed memory.

While x86 provides strong write ordering, the compiler may reorder the two
64-bit writes to the entry, and the hardware fetch is not guaranteed to be
atomic with respect to multiple CPU writes.

Commit c1e4f1dccbe9d ("iommu/vt-d: Clear Present bit before tearing down
context entry") fixed this exact pattern in domain_context_clear_one() and
the copied-context path, but device_pasid_table_teardown() was not
converted.

Align it with the "Guidance to Software for Invalidations" in the VT-d
spec, Section 6.5.3.3, using the same ownership handshake as the sibling
fix: clear only the Present bit, flush it to the IOMMU, perform the
context-cache invalidation, and only then zero the rest of the entry.


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