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Fencer Vulns
no cvss —

CVE-2025-40102 json

KVM: arm64: Prevent access to vCPU events before init

published 2025-10-30 12 mo ago modified 2026-10-19 20 d ago also EUVD-2025-36976

cvss
—
not scored
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 12%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

KVM: arm64: Prevent access to vCPU events before init

Another day, another syzkaller bug. KVM erroneously allows userspace to pend vCPU events for a vCPU that hasn't been initialized yet, leading to KVM interpreting a bunch of uninitialized garbage for routing / injecting the exception.

In one case the injection code and the hyp disagree on whether the vCPU has a 32bit EL1 and put the vCPU into an illegal mode for AArch64, tripping the BUG() in exception_target_el() during the next injection:

kernel BUG at arch/arm64/kvm/inject_fault.c:40! Internal error: Oops - BUG: 00000000f2000800 [#1] SMP CPU: 3 UID: 0 PID: 318 Comm: repro Not tainted 6.17.0-rc4-00104-g10fd0285305d #6 PREEMPT Hardware name: linux,dummy-virt (DT) pstate: 21402009 (nzCv daif +PAN -UAO -TCO +DIT -SSBS BTYPE=--) pc : exception_target_el+0x88/0x8c lr : pend_serror_exception+0x18/0x13c sp : ffff800082f03a10 x29: ffff800082f03a10 x28: ffff0000cb132280 x27: 0000000000000000 x26: 0000000000000000 x25: ffff0000c2a99c20 x24: 0000000000000000 x23: 0000000000008000 x22: 0000000000000002 x21: 0000000000000004 x20: 0000000000008000 x19: ffff0000c2a99c20 x18: 0000000000000000 x17: 0000000000000000 x16: 0000000000000000 x15: 00000000200000c0 x14: 0000000000000000 x13: 0000000000000000 x12: 0000000000000000 x11: 0000000000000000 x10: 0000000000000000 x9 : 0000000000000000 x8 : ffff800082f03af8 x7 : 0000000000000000 x6 : 0000000000000000 x5 : ffff800080f621f0 x4 : 0000000000000000 x3 : 0000000000000000 x2 : 000000000040009b x1 : 0000000000000003 x0 : ffff0000c2a99c20 Call trace: exception_target_el+0x88/0x8c (P) kvm_inject_serror_esr+0x40/0x3b4 __kvm_arm_vcpu_set_events+0xf0/0x100 kvm_arch_vcpu_ioctl+0x180/0x9d4 kvm_vcpu_ioctl+0x60c/0x9f4 __arm64_sys_ioctl+0xac/0x104 invoke_syscall+0x48/0x110 el0_svc_common.constprop.0+0x40/0xe0 do_el0_svc+0x1c/0x28 el0_svc+0x34/0xf0 el0t_64_sync_handler+0xa0/0xe4 el0t_64_sync+0x198/0x19c Code: f946bc01 b4fffe61 9101e020 17fffff2 (d4210000)

Reject the ioctls outright as no sane VMM would call these before KVM_ARM_VCPU_INIT anyway. Even if it did the exception would've been thrown away by the eventual reset of the vCPU's state.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 5.10.269, 5.15.220, 6.1.187, 6.6.156, 6.12.108, 6.17.5, 6.18
  • linux Debian 12 6.1.187-1
  • linux Debian 13 6.12.111-1
  • linux Debian 14 6.17.6-1
  • linux-6.12 Debian 12 6.12.111-1~deb12u1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2025-40102

  • linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-202.212
  • linux Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-14.14
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1119.126
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-1007.7
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1120.130
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-1007.7
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1115.121
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1113.117

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2025-40102

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 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-40.1
  • kernel-source-rt Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-40.1
  • kernel-source Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-39.1
  • kernel-default Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-39.1
  • kernel-kvmsmall Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-39.1
  • kernel-default-base Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-39.1.21.16
  • kernel-64kb SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.53.28.1
  • kernel-syms SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.53.28.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2026:20845-1SUSE-SU-2026:20876-1SUSE-SU-2026:20477-1SUSE-SU-2026:20498-1SUSE-SU-2026:0315-1SUSE-SU-2026:0293-1

  • kernel-source-longterm openSUSE Tumbleweed 6.18.16-1.1
  • kernel-rt openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.8.1
  • dtb-aarch64 openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.8.1
  • kernel-64kb openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.8.1
  • kernel-syms openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.8.1
  • kernel-obs-qa openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.8.1
  • kernel-source openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.8.1
  • kernel-default openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.8.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:10301-1openSUSE-SU-2025:20172-1openSUSE-SU-2025:15702-1

  • kernel Azure Linux 3.0 6.6.157.1-1

azure linux advisories AZL-69412

Azure Linux vulnerability data, Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation, from https://github.com/microsoft/AzureLinuxVulnerabilityData via OSV, under the MIT licence; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. MIT

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-2025-40102 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: Linux kernel KVM: Denial of Service due to uninitialized vCPU event handling

  • 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 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel
    affected: workaround, no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • 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
    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

Exploit prediction

0.22% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 12% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

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.