Skip to content
Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2024-35803 json

x86/efistub: Call mixed mode boot services on the firmware's stack

published 2024-05-17 2 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2024-35795

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 13%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

x86/efistub: Call mixed mode boot services on the firmware's stack

Normally, the EFI stub calls into the EFI boot services using the stack that was live when the stub was entered. According to the UEFI spec, this stack needs to be at least 128k in size - this might seem large but all asynchronous processing and event handling in EFI runs from the same stack and so quite a lot of space may be used in practice.

In mixed mode, the situation is a bit different: the bootloader calls the 32-bit EFI stub entry point, which calls the decompressor's 32-bit entry point, where the boot stack is set up, using a fixed allocation of 16k. This stack is still in use when the EFI stub is started in 64-bit mode, and so all calls back into the EFI firmware will be using the decompressor's limited boot stack.

Due to the placement of the boot stack right after the boot heap, any stack overruns have gone unnoticed. However, commit

5c4feadb0011983b ("x86/decompressor: Move global symbol references to C code")

moved the definition of the boot heap into C code, and now the boot stack is placed right at the base of BSS, where any overruns will corrupt the end of the .data section.

While it would be possible to work around this by increasing the size of the boot stack, doing so would affect all x86 systems, and mixed mode systems are a tiny (and shrinking) fraction of the x86 installed base.

So instead, record the firmware stack pointer value when entering from the 32-bit firmware, and switch to this stack every time a EFI boot service call is made.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.1.84, 6.6.24, 6.7.12, 6.8.3, 6.9
  • linux Debian 12 6.1.85-1
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13 6.7.12-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2024-35803

  • linux Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-35.35
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1009.9
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1008.9
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1004.7
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1006.6
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1008.8
  • linux-raspi Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1005.5
  • linux-riscv Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-35.35.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2024-35803

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-rt Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-9.1
  • kernel-source-rt Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-9.1
  • kernel-source Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-18.1
  • kernel-default Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-18.1
  • kernel-kvmsmall Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-18.1
  • kernel-default-base Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-17.1.1.51
  • kernel-rt Real Time Module 15 SP6, openSUSE Leap 15.6 6.4.0-150600.10.5.1
  • kernel-syms-rt Real Time Module 15 SP6, openSUSE Leap 15.6 6.4.0-150600.10.5.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2025:20028-1SUSE-SU-2025:20008-1SUSE-SU-2024:2973-1SUSE-SU-2024:2203-1SUSE-SU-2024:2135-1

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-2024-35803 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: x86/efistub: Call mixed mode boot services on the firmware's stack

  • 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
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”

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

Exploit prediction

0.22% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 13% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Technology feeds

References

Sources

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.