CVE-2026-89956

Status: UPDATED  |  Advisory ID: CVE-2026-89956

Key Details

Affected Products, Subsystems & Sectors

What to Know

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

s390/vfio-ap: Fix missing lock required to access list of ap_matrix_mdev objects

In order to traverse or add/remove ap_matrix_mdev objects in the

matrix_dev->mdev_list, the matrix_dev->guests_lock mutex must be held.

There are two functions that access the list without holding the mutex:

vfio_ap_mdev_probe function

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The vfio_ap_mdev_probe function uses the matrix_dev->mdevs_lock

mutex to guard the add of a newly created ap_matrix_mdev object to the

matrix_dev->mdev_list. This mutex does not protect list access; its purpose

is to guard against concurrent access to fields contained in an

ap_matrix_mdev object. This could lead to kernel memory corruption or

use-after-free if another mdev is created or removed concurrently.

The adding of an ap_matrix_mdev object to matrix_dev->mdev_list

is now guarded by the matrix_dev->guests_lock which is the correct

way to protect against concurrent mdev_list access.

Also removed the following two lines of code because the matrix_mdev is

allocated via vfio_alloc_device macro which uses kzalloc, so req_trigger

and cfg_chg_trigger are already zero-initialised when the struct is

allocated before the call to vfio_register_emulated_iommu_dev. This

prevents a window whereby these triggers are set to NULL after

the device is exposed to userspace.

matrix_mdev->req_trigger = NULL;

matrix_mdev->cfg_chg_trigger = NULL;

vfio_ap_mdev_for_queue function

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The status_show function that supports display of the status attribute of

the devices in /sys/bus/ap/devices calls the vfio_ap_mdev_for_queue

function which iterates the matrix_dev->mdev_list to find the object

representing the queue device whose status is to be displayed. In order to

traverse this list, the matrix_dev->guests_lock mutex must be held.

To fix this, the guests_lock mutex is taken prior to taking the

matrix_dev->mdevs_lock mutex in the status_show function. It is taken

there rather than the vfio_ap_mdev_for_queue function - where it is

needed - because it must be taken prior to the mdevs_lock mutex in order to

adhere to the proper locking order and prevent a lockdep splat; also

because the mdevs_lock is needed there to access fields within

the matrix_mdev object in that function.

See the vfio-ap-locking.rst in the linux kernel tree. (NVD)

What to Do

Monitor Linux's web page for any future patch releases.

References