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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2026-46290 json

x86/efi: Fix graceful fault handling after FPU softirq changes

published 2026-06-08 5 mo ago modified 2026-07-23 3 mo ago also EUVD-2026-35156

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 1%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

x86/efi: Fix graceful fault handling after FPU softirq changes

Since commit d02198550423 ("x86/fpu: Improve crypto performance by making kernel-mode FPU reliably usable in softirqs"), kernel_fpu_begin() calls fpregs_lock() which uses local_bh_disable() instead of the previous preempt_disable(). This sets SOFTIRQ_OFFSET in preempt_count during the entire EFI runtime service call, causing in_interrupt() to return true in normal task context.

The graceful page fault handler efi_crash_gracefully_on_page_fault() uses in_interrupt() to bail out for faults in real interrupt context. With SOFTIRQ_OFFSET now set, the handler always bails out, leaving EFI firmware page faults unhandled. This escalates to die() which also sees in_interrupt() as true and calls panic("Fatal exception in interrupt"), resulting in a hard system freeze. On systems with buggy firmware that triggers page faults during EFI runtime calls (e.g., accessing unmapped memory in GetTime()), this causes an unrecoverable hang instead of the expected graceful EFI_ABORTED recovery.

Fix by replacing in_interrupt() with !in_task(). This preserves the original intent of bailing for interrupts or NMI faults, while no longer falsely triggering from the FPU code path's local_bh_disable().

[ardb: Sashiko spotted that using 'in_hardirq() || in_nmi()' leaves a window where a softirq may be taken before fpregs_lock() is called, but after efi_rts_work.efi_rts_id has been assigned, and any page faults occurring in that window will then be misidentified as having been caused by the firmware. Instead, use !in_task(), which incorporates in_serving_softirq(). ]

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.18.30, 7.0.7, 7.1
  • linux Debian 14 7.0.7-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-46290

  • linux Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-28.28
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1009.9
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1008.8
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1003.4
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1010.10
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1010.10
  • linux-raspi Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1015.15
  • linux-riscv Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-28.28.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-46290

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-source openSUSE Tumbleweed 7.0.12-1.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:11014-1

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-2026-46290 updated

kernel: x86/efi: Fix graceful fault handling after FPU softirq changes

  • 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 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel
    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

0.12% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 1% 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

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