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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2026-23215 json

x86/vmware: Fix hypercall clobbers

published 2026-02-18 8 mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2026-8017

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.1%
EPSS 0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 2%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

x86/vmware: Fix hypercall clobbers

Fedora QA reported the following panic:

BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: 0000000040003e54 #PF: supervisor write access in kernel mode #PF: error_code(0x0002) - not-present page Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS edk2-20251119-3.fc43 11/19/2025 RIP: 0010:vmware_hypercall4.constprop.0+0x52/0x90 .. Call Trace: vmmouse_report_events+0x13e/0x1b0 psmouse_handle_byte+0x15/0x60 ps2_interrupt+0x8a/0xd0 ...

because the QEMU VMware mouse emulation is buggy, and clears the top 32 bits of %rdi that the kernel kept a pointer in.

The QEMU vmmouse driver saves and restores the register state in a "uint32_t data[6];" and as a result restores the state with the high bits all cleared.

RDI originally contained the value of a valid kernel stack address (0xff5eeb3240003e54). After the vmware hypercall it now contains 0x40003e54, and we get a page fault as a result when it is dereferenced.

The proper fix would be in QEMU, but this works around the issue in the kernel to keep old setups working, when old kernels had not happened to keep any state in %rdi over the hypercall.

In theory this same issue exists for all the hypercalls in the vmmouse driver; in practice it has only been seen with vmware_hypercall3() and vmware_hypercall4(). For now, just mark RDI/RSI as clobbered for those two calls. This should have a minimal effect on code generation overall as it should be rare for the compiler to want to make RDI/RSI live across hypercalls.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.12.70, 6.18.10, 6.19
  • linux Debian 13 6.12.73-1
  • linux Debian 14 6.18.10-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-23215

  • linux Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-117.117
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1055.58
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1058.61
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1054.60
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1055.56
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1056.62
  • linux-gkeop Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1041.44
  • linux-raspi Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1056.60

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-23215

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 Real Time Module 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.7.37.2
  • kernel-syms-rt Real Time Module 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.7.37.1
  • kernel-source-rt Real Time Module 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.7.37.2
  • kernel-rt Linux Micro 6.2 6.12.0-160000.28.1
  • kernel-64kb Linux Micro 6.2 6.12.0-160000.28.1
  • kernel-source Linux Micro 6.2 6.12.0-160000.28.1
  • kernel-default Linux Micro 6.2 6.12.0-160000.28.1
  • kernel-default-base Linux Micro 6.2 6.12.0-160000.27.1.160000.2.8

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2026:1573-1SUSE-SU-2026:21237-1SUSE-SU-2026:21230-1

  • kernel-rt openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.28.1
  • dtb-aarch64 openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.28.1
  • kernel-64kb openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.28.1
  • kernel-syms openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.28.1
  • kernel-azure openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.28.1
  • kernel-obs-qa openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.28.1
  • kernel-source openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.28.1
  • kernel-default openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.28.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:20572-1

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-2026-23215 updated cvss 4.7

kernel: x86/vmware: Fix hypercall clobbers

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel
    affected: 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 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
    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

0.13% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 2% 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.