CVE-2026-74439

About vulnerability

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

iommu/vt-d: Clear Present bit before tearing down scalable-mode context entry

device_pasid_table_teardown() zeroes the 128-bit scalable-mode context entry with context_clear_entry() while the Present bit is still set. This creates a window where the hardware can fetch a torn entry, with some fields already zeroed while Present is still set, leading to unpredictable behavior or spurious faults. The context-cache invalidation is issued only after the entry has been zeroed, and intel_pasid_free_table() then frees the PASID directory pages, so the IOMMU can keep walking a stale Present=1 entry that points at freed memory.

While x86 provides strong write ordering, the compiler may reorder the two 64-bit writes to the entry, and the hardware fetch is not guaranteed to be atomic with respect to multiple CPU writes.

Commit c1e4f1dccbe9d (“iommu/vt-d: Clear Present bit before tearing down context entry”) fixed this exact pattern in domain_context_clear_one() and the copied-context path, but device_pasid_table_teardown() was not converted.

Align it with the “Guidance to Software for Invalidations” in the VT-d spec, Section 6.5.3.3, using the same ownership handshake as the sibling fix: clear only the Present bit, flush it to the IOMMU, perform the context-cache invalidation, and only then zero the rest of the entry.

Affected product:

AlmaLinux 9.2 ESU , Debian 10 ELS , TuxCare 9.6 ESU , TuxCare 9.8 ESU

Affected packages:

linux @ 4.19.0 (+3 more)

Live-patch status from KernelCare for each operating system.