In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: iommu/vt-d: Clear Present bit before tearing down scalable-mode cont…
CVE-2026-74439 · published 15 Aug 2026
How serious is it
- Severity: critical, CVSS score 9.3 out of 10.
- No exploit prediction (EPSS) score yet.
- Not on the CISA list of exploited vulnerabilities.
- No public exploit in Exploit-DB.
Is your app affected by CVE-2026-74439?
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Who is affected
- Linux Linux: 6.9
How to check
- Find out whether you run the affected product and which version, then compare it with the versions above.
How to fix
Copies a prompt for Claude Code, Cursor or Codex that asks it to check whether you run this product.
- Apply the vendor's update or mitigation from the references below. If there is none yet, limit exposure of the affected service until there is.
- If a vulnerable version was live, check your logs and rotate the secrets that server could read.
The advisory
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.
Check your whole app
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References
- git.kernel.org/stable/c/588718101e8449605f1c7e858fecb7cfa701cdab
- git.kernel.org/stable/c/7fd4077dc92b91b1b844333c0a06bb9e286db10a
- git.kernel.org/stable/c/e9e83bcfe37dc719182500dd823c03ab57d934f0
- git.kernel.org/stable/c/f46452c3df7a8d8a5addc0926e76ef19ea7da0a0
Merged from NVD. Last updated 24 Oct 2026. All vulnerabilities · RSS · JSON