CVE-2025-68259

medium

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: KVM: SVM: Don't skip unrelated instruction if INT3/INTO is replaced When re-injecting a soft interrupt from an INT3, INT0, or (select) INTn instruction, discard the exception and retry the instruction if the code stream is changed (e.g. by a different vCPU) between when the CPU executes the instruction and when KVM decodes the instruction to get the next RIP. As effectively predicted by commit 6ef88d6e36c2 ("KVM: SVM: Re-inject INT3/INTO instead of retrying the instruction"), failure to verify that the correct INTn instruction was decoded can effectively clobber guest state due to decoding the wrong instruction and thus specifying the wrong next RIP. The bug most often manifests as "Oops: int3" panics on static branch checks in Linux guests. Enabling or disabling a static branch in Linux uses the kernel's "text poke" code patching mechanism. To modify code while other CPUs may be executing that code, Linux (temporarily) replaces the first byte of the original instruction with an int3 (opcode 0xcc), then patches in the new code stream except for the first byte, and finally replaces the int3 with the first byte of the new code stream. If a CPU hits the int3, i.e. executes the code while it's being modified, then the guest kernel must look up the RIP to determine how to handle the #BP, e.g. by emulating the new instruction. If the RIP is incorrect, then this lookup fails and the guest kernel panics. The bug reproduces almost instantly by hacking the guest kernel to repeatedly check a static branch[1] while running a drgn script[2] on the host to constantly swap out the memory containing the guest's TSS. [1]: https://gist.github.com/osandov/44d17c51c28c0ac998ea0334edf90b5a [2]: https://gist.github.com/osandov/10e45e45afa29b11e0c7209247afc00b

References

https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/87cc1622c88a4888959d64fa1fc9ba1e264aa3d4

https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/54bcccc2c7805a00af1d7d2faffd6f424c0133aa

https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/53903ac9ca1abffa27327e85075ec496fa55ccf3

https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4da3768e1820cf15cced390242d8789aed34f54d

https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2e84a018c2895c05abe213eb10db128aa45f6ec6

https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/152289a51107ef45bbfe9b4aeeaa584a503042b5

Details

Source: Mitre, NVD

Published: 2025-12-16

Updated: 2026-01-11

Risk Information

CVSS v2

Base Score: 4.6

Vector: CVSS2#AV:L/AC:L/Au:S/C:N/I:N/A:C

Severity: Medium

CVSS v3

Base Score: 5.5

Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Severity: Medium

EPSS

EPSS: 0.00018