CVE-2026-74516

About vulnerability

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

KVM: SVM: Update x2APIC MSR intercepts if AVIC is inhibited while L2 is active

Always update x2APIC MSR intercepts for L1 when AVIC is deactivated, even if L2 is active and KVM is using a separate MSR bitmap to run L2. If AVIC is fully enabled prior to running L2, and is then inhibited while L2 is active (for a VM-scoped inhibit), then KVM will run L1 with AVIC disabled, but with x2APIC MSR intercepts disabled, i.e. will allow L1 to read most of the host’s APIC state, send arbitrary interrupts, change task priority, and ultimately trivially DoS the host.

E.g. sending a self-IPI in L1 on HYPERV_REENLIGHTENMENT_VECTOR, 0xee, with CONFIG_HYPERV=n in the host kernel as a “safe” PoC, yields:

Spurious interrupt (vector 0xee) on CPU#425. Acked

And hacking KVM to abuse kvm_set_posted_intr_wakeup_handler() to register a handler and WARN on POSTED_INTR_WAKEUP_VECTOR yields:

————[ cut here ]———— WARNING: arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.c:5594 at pi_wakeup_handler+0x9/0x10 [kvm_amd], CPU#156: nested_x2apic_t/316940 CPU: 156 UID: 0 PID: 316940 Comm: nested_x2apic_t Tainted: G S U Tainted: [S]=CPU_OUT_OF_SPEC, [U]=USER Hardware name: Google Astoria-Turin/astoria, BIOS 0.20260209.0-0 02/09/2026 RIP: 0010:pi_wakeup_handler+0x9/0x10 [kvm_amd] Call Trace: <IRQ> sysvec_kvm_posted_intr_wakeup_ipi+0x64/0x80 </IRQ> <TASK> asm_sysvec_kvm_posted_intr_wakeup_ipi+0x1a/0x20 RIP: 0010:vcpu_run+0x1430/0x1e40 [kvm] kvm_arch_vcpu_ioctl_run+0x2c1/0x600 [kvm] kvm_vcpu_ioctl+0x580/0x6b0 [kvm] __se_sys_ioctl+0x6d/0xb0 do_syscall_64+0x10a/0x480 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x4b/0x53 RIP: 0033:0x46ff4b </TASK> —[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]—

Affected product:

AlmaLinux 9.2 ESU , CentOS 8.4 ELS , CentOS 8.5 ELS , CentOS Stream 8 ELS , TuxCare 9.6 ESU , TuxCare 9.8 ESU

Affected packages:

kernel @ 4.18.0 (+5 more)

Live-patch status from KernelCare for each operating system.