linux-cve-announce - CVE-2025-68810: KVM: Disallow toggling KVM_MEM_GUEST

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Message-ID: <2026011311-CVE-2025-68810-308a@gregkh>
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2026 16:29:36 +0100
From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
To: linux-cve-announce@...r.kernel.org
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...nel.org>
Subject: CVE-2025-68810: KVM: Disallow toggling KVM_MEM_GUEST_MEMFD on an existing memslot

From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...nel.org>

Description
===========

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

KVM: Disallow toggling KVM_MEM_GUEST_MEMFD on an existing memslot

Reject attempts to disable KVM_MEM_GUEST_MEMFD on a memslot that was
initially created with a guest_memfd binding, as KVM doesn't support
toggling KVM_MEM_GUEST_MEMFD on existing memslots.  KVM prevents enabling
KVM_MEM_GUEST_MEMFD, but doesn't prevent clearing the flag.

Failure to reject the new memslot results in a use-after-free due to KVM
not unbinding from the guest_memfd instance.  Unbinding on a FLAGS_ONLY
change is easy enough, and can/will be done as a hardening measure (in
anticipation of KVM supporting dirty logging on guest_memfd at some point),
but fixing the use-after-free would only address the immediate symptom.

  ==================================================================
  BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in kvm_gmem_release+0x362/0x400 [kvm]
  Write of size 8 at addr ffff8881111ae908 by task repro/745

  CPU: 7 UID: 1000 PID: 745 Comm: repro Not tainted 6.18.0-rc6-115d5de2eef3-next-kasan #3 NONE
  Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS 0.0.0 02/06/2015
  Call Trace:
   <TASK>
   dump_stack_lvl+0x51/0x60
   print_report+0xcb/0x5c0
   kasan_report+0xb4/0xe0
   kvm_gmem_release+0x362/0x400 [kvm]
   __fput+0x2fa/0x9d0
   task_work_run+0x12c/0x200
   do_exit+0x6ae/0x2100
   do_group_exit+0xa8/0x230
   __x64_sys_exit_group+0x3a/0x50
   x64_sys_call+0x737/0x740
   do_syscall_64+0x5b/0x900
   entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x4b/0x53
  RIP: 0033:0x7f581f2eac31
   </TASK>

  Allocated by task 745 on cpu 6 at 9.746971s:
   kasan_save_stack+0x20/0x40
   kasan_save_track+0x13/0x50
   __kasan_kmalloc+0x77/0x90
   kvm_set_memory_region.part.0+0x652/0x1110 [kvm]
   kvm_vm_ioctl+0x14b0/0x3290 [kvm]
   __x64_sys_ioctl+0x129/0x1a0
   do_syscall_64+0x5b/0x900
   entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x4b/0x53

  Freed by task 745 on cpu 6 at 9.747467s:
   kasan_save_stack+0x20/0x40
   kasan_save_track+0x13/0x50
   __kasan_save_free_info+0x37/0x50
   __kasan_slab_free+0x3b/0x60
   kfree+0xf5/0x440
   kvm_set_memslot+0x3c2/0x1160 [kvm]
   kvm_set_memory_region.part.0+0x86a/0x1110 [kvm]
   kvm_vm_ioctl+0x14b0/0x3290 [kvm]
   __x64_sys_ioctl+0x129/0x1a0
   do_syscall_64+0x5b/0x900
   entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x4b/0x53

The Linux kernel CVE team has assigned CVE-2025-68810 to this issue.


Affected and fixed versions
===========================

	Issue introduced in 6.8 with commit a7800aa80ea4d5356b8474c2302812e9d4926fa6 and fixed in 6.12.64 with commit 89dbbe6ff323fc34659621a577fe0af913f47386
	Issue introduced in 6.8 with commit a7800aa80ea4d5356b8474c2302812e9d4926fa6 and fixed in 6.18.3 with commit cb51bef465d8ec60a968507330e01020e35dc127
	Issue introduced in 6.8 with commit a7800aa80ea4d5356b8474c2302812e9d4926fa6 and fixed in 6.19-rc2 with commit 9935df5333aa503a18de5071f53762b65c783c4c

Please see https://www.kernel.org for a full list of currently supported
kernel versions by the kernel community.

Unaffected versions might change over time as fixes are backported to
older supported kernel versions.  The official CVE entry at
	https://cve.org/CVERecord/?id=CVE-2025-68810
will be updated if fixes are backported, please check that for the most
up to date information about this issue.


Affected files
==============

The file(s) affected by this issue are:
	virt/kvm/kvm_main.c


Mitigation
==========

The Linux kernel CVE team recommends that you update to the latest
stable kernel version for this, and many other bugfixes.  Individual
changes are never tested alone, but rather are part of a larger kernel
release.  Cherry-picking individual commits is not recommended or
supported by the Linux kernel community at all.  If however, updating to
the latest release is impossible, the individual changes to resolve this
issue can be found at these commits:
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/89dbbe6ff323fc34659621a577fe0af913f47386
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/cb51bef465d8ec60a968507330e01020e35dc127
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/9935df5333aa503a18de5071f53762b65c783c4c