CVE-2025-40300

NameCVE-2025-40300
DescriptionIn the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: x86/vmscape: Add conditional IBPB mitigation VMSCAPE is a vulnerability that exploits insufficient branch predictor isolation between a guest and a userspace hypervisor (like QEMU). Existing mitigations already protect kernel/KVM from a malicious guest. Userspace can additionally be protected by flushing the branch predictors after a VMexit. Since it is the userspace that consumes the poisoned branch predictors, conditionally issue an IBPB after a VMexit and before returning to userspace. Workloads that frequently switch between hypervisor and userspace will incur the most overhead from the new IBPB. This new IBPB is not integrated with the existing IBPB sites. For instance, a task can use the existing speculation control prctl() to get an IBPB at context switch time. With this implementation, the IBPB is doubled up: one at context switch and another before running userspace. The intent is to integrate and optimize these cases post-embargo. [ dhansen: elaborate on suboptimal IBPB solution ]
SourceCVE (at NVD; CERT, LWN, oss-sec, fulldisc, Debian ELTS, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Gentoo, SUSE bugzilla/CVE, GitHub advisories/code/issues, web search, more)
ReferencesDSA-6008-1, DSA-6009-1

Vulnerable and fixed packages

The table below lists information on source packages.

Source PackageReleaseVersionStatus
linux (PTS)bullseye5.10.223-1vulnerable
bullseye (security)5.10.237-1vulnerable
bookworm6.1.148-1vulnerable
bookworm (security)6.1.153-1fixed
trixie6.12.43-1vulnerable
trixie (security)6.12.48-1fixed
forky6.16.8-1fixed
sid6.16.9-1fixed

The information below is based on the following data on fixed versions.

PackageTypeReleaseFixed VersionUrgencyOriginDebian Bugs
linuxsourcebookworm6.1.153-1DSA-6009-1
linuxsourcetrixie6.12.48-1DSA-6008-1
linuxsource(unstable)6.16.7-1

Notes

https://git.kernel.org/linus/2f8f173413f1cbf52660d04df92d0069c4306d25
https://git.kernel.org/linus/556c1ad666ad90c50ec8fccb930dd5046cfbecfb
https://comsec.ethz.ch/research/microarch/vmscape-exposing-and-exploiting-incomplete-branch-predictor-isolation-in-cloud-environments/
https://comsec-files.ethz.ch/papers/vmscape_sp26.pdf
https://virtualize.sh/blog/vmscape-and-why-xen-dodged-it/

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