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Linux Kernel CVE-2026-89916

| EUVDEUVD-2026-80516 CRITICAL
2026-09-16 Linux GHSA-5p99-rg43-px7f
9.3
CVSS 3.1 · Vendor: Linux
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Severity by source

Vendor (Linux) PRIMARY
9.3 CRITICAL
AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
vuln.today AI
6.4 MEDIUM

Local guest vCPU access (AV:L, PR:L), timing race lowers reliability (AC:H), guest-to-host crossing (S:C); impact is host instability (A:H) with at most bounded integrity (I:L) and no real confidentiality primitive (C:N).

3.1 AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:H
4.0 AV:L/AC:H/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:L/SC:N/SI:L/SA:H

Primary rating from Vendor (Linux).

CVSS VectorVendor: Linux

Attack Vector
Local
Attack Complexity
Low
Privileges Required
None
User Interaction
None
Scope
Changed
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

Lifecycle Timeline

7
Metadata Corrected
Sep 16, 2026 - 16:40 vuln.today
tag: Denial Of Service added
Metadata Corrected
Sep 16, 2026 - 16:40 vuln.today
tag: KVM added
Analysis Generated
Sep 16, 2026 - 15:58 vuln.today
CVSS changed
Sep 16, 2026 - 15:22 NVD
9.3 (CRITICAL)
Patch available
Sep 16, 2026 - 11:03 EUVD
CVE Published
Sep 16, 2026 - 10:32 cve.org
UNKNOWN (no severity yet)
CVE Published
Sep 16, 2026 - 10:32 cve.org
CRITICAL 9.3

DescriptionCVE.org

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

KVM: arm64: Make VNCR invalidation participate in MMU invalidation retry

A VNCR TLB invalidation can occur on one vcpu while another vcpu is faulting in this same page. Without correctly handling this, we can end up with the following scenario:

  • vcpu A walks the PTs to translate VNCR
  • before vcpu A is able to grab the MMU lock to insert the TLB,

vcpu B updates the S1 PTs with an invalid entry, and issues a TLBI S1E2 for this VA

  • vcpu A inserts the TLB for something that is now invalid

This isn't a new problem, and we manage S2 by having the MMU notifier to bump up mmu_invalidate_seq on invalidation so that the fault can be replayed.

We can perform something similar here, and extend invalidate_vncr_va() to update the same counter, clearly indicating that the context has changed under our feet. This is safe as the invalidation always happen while holding the MMU lock for write, and that we sample the sequence number before walking S1.

AnalysisAI

Race conditions in the arm64 KVM path that invalidates VNCR translations can leave a stale stage-1 TLB entry installed for a page-table mapping that another vCPU has just invalidated, so a guest can keep using a translation the host believes is gone, corrupting host state and potentially crashing the host. The flaw only affects arm64 hosts running KVM with nested virtualization (FEAT_NV2 / VNCR fixmap) enabled where an attacker already controls a guest with at least two concurrently executing vCPUs, and exploitation hinges on winning a narrow race window between invalidate_vncr_va() on one vCPU and a VNCR translation fault-in on another (one vCPU rewriting S1 page tables and issuing TLBI S1E2 while the other is mid-walk). …

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Attack ChainAIDerived

Hypothetical attack flow derived from CVE metadata

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Delivery
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Vulnerability AssessmentAI

Exploitation Requires an arm64 host running KVM with nested virtualization support (FEAT_NV2 / VNCR fixmap path) enabled, and an attacker who already controls a guest with at least two concurrently-running vCPUs. … Additional conditions and limiting factors are described in the full assessment.
Risk Assessment This is a genuine but low-real-world-priority host-availability bug, and the vendor CVSS of 9.3 materially over-states it. … Full risk analysis with EPSS, KEV, and SSVC signal comparison available after sign-in.
Exploit Scenario Full exploit scenario with step-by-step reproduction available after sign-in.
Remediation Apply the vendor kernel updates: upgrade to Linux 7.2.5, 6.18.51 or 7.3-rc1 (or later on those branches), which include the fix commits d8580e7aa189b0c6c5bb4d94b8352728a7c35bbd, 11ee3faab4f1755d126bead9f882e75a7a677860 and 2b7324f3a0c1072b9d578b8d42f199506753f26e (see https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/d8580e7aa189b0c6c5bb4d94b8352728a7c35bbd and the EUVD advisory EUVD-2026-80516 / https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-89916). … Detailed patch versions, workarounds, and compensating controls in full report.

Recommended ActionAI

Within 24 hours, inventory every arm64 host running KVM and confirm which of them have nested virtualization (FEAT_NV2/VNCR) enabled, since hosts without nested virtualization are not in scope, and flag any multi-tenant or nested-virtualization platform as the priority remediation group. …

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Threat intelligence, references, and detailed analysis are available after sign-in.

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CVE-2026-89916 vulnerability details – vuln.today

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