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Linux Kernel EUVDEUVD-2026-32872

| CVE-2026-46113 HIGH
Use After Free (CWE-416)
2026-05-28 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67 GHSA-gcf3-9g28-gv44
8.8
CVSS 3.1 · Vendor: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
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Severity by source

Vendor (416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67) PRIMARY
8.8 HIGH
AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
SUSE
HIGH
qualitative
Red Hat
5.5 MEDIUM
qualitative

Primary rating from Vendor (416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67).

CVSS VectorVendor: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
Attack Vector
Local
Attack Complexity
Low
Privileges Required
Low
User Interaction
None
Scope
Changed
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

Lifecycle Timeline

5
Analysis Generated
May 30, 2026 - 11:50 vuln.today
CVSS changed
May 30, 2026 - 11:22 NVD
8.8 (HIGH)
Patch available
May 28, 2026 - 12:31 EUVD
CVE Published
May 28, 2026 - 10:16 nvd
UNKNOWN (no severity yet)
CVE Published
May 28, 2026 - 10:16 nvd
HIGH 8.8

DescriptionCVE.org

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

KVM: x86: Fix shadow paging use-after-free due to unexpected GFN

The shadow MMU computes GFNs for direct shadow pages using sp->gfn plus the SPTE index. This assumption breaks for shadow paging if the guest page tables are modified between VM entries (similar to commit aad885e77496, "KVM: x86/mmu: Drop/zap existing present SPTE even when creating an MMIO SPTE", 2026-03-27). The flow is as follows:

  • a PDE is installed for a 2MB mapping, and a page in that area is

accessed. KVM creates a kvm_mmu_page consisting of 512 4KB pages; the kvm_mmu_page is marked by FNAME(fetch) as direct-mapped because the guest's mapping is a huge page (and thus contiguous).

  • the PDE mapping is changed from outside the guest.
  • the guest accesses another page in the same 2MB area. KVM installs

a new leaf SPTE and rmap entry; the SPTE uses the "correct" GFN (i.e. based on the new mapping, as changed in the previous step) but that GFN is outside of the [sp->gfn, sp->gfn + 511] range; therefore the rmap entry cannot be found and removed when the kvm_mmu_page is zapped.

  • the memslot that covers the first 2MB mapping is deleted, and the

kvm_mmu_page for the now-invalid GPA is zapped. However, rmap_remove() only looks at the [sp->gfn, sp->gfn + 511] range established in step 1, and fails to find the rmap entry that was recorded by step 3.

  • any operation that causes an rmap walk for the same page accessed

by step 3 then walks a stale rmap and dereferences a freed kvm_mmu_page. This includes dirty logging or MMU notifier invalidations (e.g., from MADV_DONTNEED).

The underlying issue is that KVM's walking of shadow PTEs assumes that if a SPTE is present when KVM wants to install a non-leaf SPTE, then the existing kvm_mmu_page must be for the correct gfn. Because the only way for the gfn to be wrong is if KVM messed up and failed to zap a SPTE... which shouldn't happen, but *actually* only happens in response to a guest write.

That bug dates back literally forever, as even the first version of KVM assumes that the GFN matches and walks into the "wrong" shadow page. However, that was only an imprecision until 2032a93d66fa ("KVM: MMU: Don't allocate gfns page for direct mmu pages") came along.

Fix it by checking for a target gfn mismatch and zapping the existing SPTE. That way the old SP and rmap entries are gone, KVM installs the rmap in the right location, and everyone is happy.

AnalysisAI

Use-after-free in the Linux kernel's KVM x86 shadow MMU allows a malicious guest VM to corrupt host memory and potentially escalate privileges on the hypervisor. The flaw occurs when a guest modifies its page tables between VM entries, causing KVM to install rmap entries outside the expected GFN range of a direct-mapped shadow page; subsequent rmap walks (e.g., during dirty logging or MMU notifier invalidations from MADV_DONTNEED) then dereference a freed kvm_mmu_page. EPSS is very low (0.02%) and no public exploit identified at time of analysis, but the bug has existed since the earliest KVM versions and is now patched upstream.

Technical ContextAI

The vulnerability lives in arch/x86/kvm/mmu - specifically the shadow paging logic that backs nested or non-EPT/NPT guests on KVM-enabled Linux hosts. KVM's shadow MMU computes guest frame numbers (GFNs) for direct shadow pages by adding the SPTE index to sp->gfn, which assumes the guest's page table mapping for that range is stable. When a guest rewrites a PDE between VM entries, a kvm_mmu_page originally created for a 2MB huge-page mapping can end up tracking 4KB SPTEs whose true GFNs fall outside [sp->gfn, sp->gfn+511]; the resulting rmap entry is then unreachable from rmap_remove() when the shadow page is zapped, leaving a dangling pointer to freed memory. This is a classic CWE-416 (use-after-free) condition triggered by a desynchronization between cached shadow-MMU state and the live guest page tables, regression-prone since commit 2032a93d66fa removed per-direct-SP gfn tracking.

RemediationAI

Vendor-released patch: upgrade to Linux 6.6.140, 6.12.88, 6.18.30, 7.0.7, or 7.1-rc3 (or later) depending on the stable branch in use, pulling the fix from one of the kernel.org commits 0cb2af2ea66a, 488e386484ec, 14d1e55dfd2c, 738ec97b1855, or 06c19c967b84 referenced at https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/. On distro kernels, apply the corresponding vendor security update once available and reboot to load the patched kernel (live-patching may not cover MMU changes). As a compensating control until patched, prefer hardware-assisted nested paging by ensuring kvm_intel is loaded with ept=1 or kvm_amd with npt=1 (the defaults on modern hardware) so the vulnerable shadow MMU path is not exercised; on hosts without EPT/NPT, restrict guest creation to trusted tenants since the attacker must run code inside a guest. Avoid disabling KVM outright unless virtualization is non-essential, as that has obvious functional impact; minimizing use of MADV_DONTNEED-heavy workloads or dirty-logging-based live migration on unpatched shadow-paging hosts narrows the trigger surface but is not a reliable mitigation.

Vendor StatusVendor

SUSE

Severity: High
Product Status
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 15 SP7 Fixed
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 15 SP7 Fixed
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 15 SP7 Fixed
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 15 SP7 Fixed
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing 15 SP7 Fixed

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EUVD-2026-32872 vulnerability details – vuln.today

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