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Linux Kernel EUVDEUVD-2026-45713

| CVE-2026-63940 CRITICAL
2026-07-19 Linux GHSA-jx39-q92m-wf39
Critical
Disputed · 9.3 Vendor: Linux
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Severity by source

Sources disagree (Medium–Critical)
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
4.2 MEDIUM

Requires a malicious SEV guest (PR:L, AV:L) and winning an underflow race (AC:H); guest-to-host boundary gives S:C, but the hardening fix implies limited real impact (C:L/A:L).

3.1 AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:N/A:L
4.0 AV:L/AC:H/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:L/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
SUSE
CRITICAL
qualitative
Red Hat
7.0 MEDIUM
qualitative

vuln.today treats the vendor’s rating as authoritative. A higher third-party CVSS (e.g. CISA-ADP) is shown for transparency but does not drive the headline severity.

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

5
Analysis Generated
Jul 20, 2026 - 16:26 vuln.today
CVSS changed
Jul 20, 2026 - 15:22 NVD
9.3 (CRITICAL)
Patch available
Jul 19, 2026 - 17:19 EUVD
CVE Published
Jul 19, 2026 - 14:55 cve.org
CRITICAL 9.3
CVE Published
Jul 19, 2026 - 14:55 cve.org
UNKNOWN (no severity yet)

DescriptionCVE.org

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

KVM: SEV: Ignore Port I/O requests of length '0'

Explicitly ignore Port I/O requests of length '0' (or count '0'), so that setting up the software scratch area (and other code) doesn't have to worry about underflowing the length, and to allow for WARNing on trying to configure the scratch area with len==0.

AnalysisAI

Improper handling of zero-length Port I/O (PIO) requests in the Linux kernel's KVM AMD SEV/SEV-ES support allows a malicious confidential-computing guest to reach a length-underflow path when the hypervisor sets up the GHCB software scratch area. No public exploit has been identified at time of analysis and it is not on CISA KEV, though a vendor (upstream) patch is available. Despite a headline CVSS of 9.3, EPSS is only 0.20% (10th percentile), and the fix itself is a defensive hardening that ignores len/count '0' PIO to prevent length underflow.

Technical ContextAI

The affected component is KVM's AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV/SEV-ES) code path that services guest VMGEXIT/GHCB requests, specifically the emulation of Port I/O (IN/OUT string) operations backed by the GHCB 'software scratch area'. When a guest issues a PIO request, the host computes a data length from the port width multiplied by the repeat count; a request with length or count of '0' can cause the scratch-area setup and downstream arithmetic to underflow the length value. The upstream fix explicitly ignores len'0'/count'0' requests so the scratch-area configuration cannot be driven with len==0 (and adds a WARN on that condition). No CWE was assigned in the input, but the root cause class is an integer/length underflow leading to out-of-bounds access - consistent with the vendor 'Information Disclosure' tag. The affected code was introduced by commit 291bd20d5d88 (SEV-ES GHCB support), so only kernels containing that SEV-ES scratch-area logic are in scope.

RemediationAI

Apply the vendor-released patch by upgrading to a fixed stable kernel: 6.12.95, 6.18.35, 7.0.12, or mainline 7.1 (or later), matching your maintained series - cross-reference the exact stable commits at https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3988bd2723de407ae90fa7a6f6029b4e60238c58 and the companion commits, and rebuild/redeploy the affected hosts. If immediate patching is not possible, the practical compensating control is to disable AMD SEV/SEV-ES confidential-computing guests on affected hypervisors (do not launch SEV-encrypted VMs), which removes the vulnerable code path entirely at the cost of losing memory-encryption isolation for tenant workloads. Restricting who can start SEV guests to trusted operators reduces exposure to untrusted-tenant abuse but does not fix the bug. Because the affected surface is guest-to-host, standard host hardening (up-to-date microcode, minimizing untrusted multi-tenant SEV workloads) is a reasonable interim posture until the kernel update is rolled out.

Vendor StatusVendor

SUSE

Severity: Critical
Product Status
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 15 SP7 Affected
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 15 SP7 Affected
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 15 SP7 Affected
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 15 SP7 Affected
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 16.0 Affected

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EUVD-2026-45713 vulnerability details – vuln.today

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