KVM: x86: Immediately reset the MMU context when the SMM flag is cleared

published 2024-05-21 2 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2021-33878

cvss: 6.6; version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 0.2%; EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 14%
public exploits: 0; none known

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

Immediately reset the MMU context when the vCPU's SMM flag is cleared so that the SMM flag in the MMU role is always synchronized with the vCPU's flag. If RSM fails (which isn't correctly emulated), KVM will bail without calling post_leave_smm() and leave the MMU in a bad state.

The bad MMU role can lead to a NULL pointer dereference when grabbing a shadow page's rmap for a page fault as the initial lookups for the gfn will happen with the vCPU's SMM flag (=0), whereas the rmap lookup will use the shadow page's SMM flag, which comes from the MMU (=1). SMM has an entirely different set of memslots, and so the initial lookup can find a memslot (SMM=0) and then explode on the rmap memslot lookup (SMM=1).

general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xdffffc0000000000: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP KASAN KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x0000000000000000-0x0000000000000007] CPU: 1 PID: 8410 Comm: syz-executor382 Not tainted 5.13.0-rc5-syzkaller #0 Hardware name: Google Google Compute Engine/Google Compute Engine, BIOS Google 01/01/2011 RIP: 0010:__gfn_to_rmap arch/x86/kvm/mmu/mmu.c:935 [inline] RIP: 0010:gfn_to_rmap+0x2b0/0x4d0 arch/x86/kvm/mmu/mmu.c:947 Code: <42> 80 3c 20 00 74 08 4c 89 ff e8 f1 79 a9 00 4c 89 fb 4d 8b 37 44 RSP: 0018:ffffc90000ffef98 EFLAGS: 00010246 RAX: 0000000000000000 RBX: ffff888015b9f414 RCX: ffff888019669c40 RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: 0000000000000001 RDI: 0000000000000001 RBP: 0000000000000001 R08: ffffffff811d9cdb R09: ffffed10065a6002 R10: ffffed10065a6002 R11: 0000000000000000 R12: dffffc0000000000 R13: 0000000000000003 R14: 0000000000000001 R15: 0000000000000000 FS: 000000000124b300(0000) GS:ffff8880b9b00000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: 0000000000000000 CR3: 0000000028e31000 CR4: 00000000001526e0 DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000 DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000fffe0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400 Call Trace: rmap_add arch/x86/kvm/mmu/mmu.c:965 [inline] mmu_set_spte+0x862/0xe60 arch/x86/kvm/mmu/mmu.c:2604 __direct_map arch/x86/kvm/mmu/mmu.c:2862 [inline] direct_page_fault+0x1f74/0x2b70 arch/x86/kvm/mmu/mmu.c:3769 kvm_mmu_do_page_fault arch/x86/kvm/mmu.h:124 [inline] kvm_mmu_page_fault+0x199/0x1440 arch/x86/kvm/mmu/mmu.c:5065 vmx_handle_exit+0x26/0x160 arch/x86/kvm/vmx/vmx.c:6122 vcpu_enter_guest+0x3bdd/0x9630 arch/x86/kvm/x86.c:9428 vcpu_run+0x416/0xc20 arch/x86/kvm/x86.c:9494 kvm_arch_vcpu_ioctl_run+0x4e8/0xa40 arch/x86/kvm/x86.c:9722 kvm_vcpu_ioctl+0x70f/0xbb0 arch/x86/kvm/../../../virt/kvm/kvm_main.c:3460 vfs_ioctl fs/ioctl.c:51 [inline] __do_sys_ioctl fs/ioctl.c:1069 [inline] __se_sys_ioctl+0xfb/0x170 fs/ioctl.c:1055 do_syscall_64+0x3f/0xb0 arch/x86/entry/common.c:47 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x44/0xae RIP: 0033:0x440ce9

Patch / fix

fixed in 2 distros 3 links 4

Linux Linux 5.4.128, 5.10.46, 5.12.13, 5.13
linux linux_kernel 78fcb2c91adf, 669a8866e468, cbb425f62df9, df9a40cfb3be

debian ubuntu suse

linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 5.10.46-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2021-47230

linux Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-81.91
linux-aws Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1055.58
linux-gcp Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1051.55
linux-kvm Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1045.47
linux-azure Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1056.58
linux-gkeop Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1022.23
linux-raspi Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1042.46
linux-oracle Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1053.57

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2021-47230

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

kernel-64kb SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP3-LTSS, Enterprise Storage 7.1 5.3.18-150300.59.164.1
kernel-syms SLES for SAP 15 SP3, SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP3-LTSS +1 more 5.3.18-150300.59.164.1
kernel-source SLES for SAP 15 SP3, SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP3-LTSS +1 more 5.3.18-150300.59.164.1
kernel-default SLES for SAP 15 SP3, SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.2 +5 more 5.3.18-150300.59.164.1
kernel-preempt SLES for SAP 15 SP3, SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP3-LTSS +1 more 5.3.18-150300.59.164.1
kernel-obs-build SLES for SAP 15 SP3, SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP3-LTSS +1 more 5.3.18-150300.59.164.1
kernel-default-base SLES for SAP 15 SP3, SLES 15 SP3-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.2 +3 more 5.3.18-150300.59.164.1.150300.18.96.1
kernel-rt SLE Micro 5.2, SLE Micro 5.1 5.3.18-150300.172.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2024:2185-1 SUSE-SU-2024:2010-1

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2021-47230 updated 2026-11-05 cvss 5.5

kernel: KVM: x86: Immediately reset the MMU context when the SMM flag is cleared

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more
affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 kernel-rt, kernel-rt-selftests-internal
affected: no fix available
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +82 more
not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation: none
Automatable: no
Technical impact: partial
Assessed: 2 y ago (2024-06-04)

Exploit prediction

0.23% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 14% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
CISA ADP	3.1	6.6	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H
CNA	3.1	6.6	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H

Affected products

Linux Linux
linux linux_kernel

Classification

Weakness

CWE-476 NULL Pointer Dereference

Technology feeds

Linux kernel rss critical rss

References

Sources

CVE List CVE-2021-47230
NVD CVE-2021-47230

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

Summary