CVE-2022-49610 KVM: VMX: Prevent RSB underflow before vmenter

What is CVE-2022-49610?

CVE-2022-49610 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 26 Feb 2025. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

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

KVM: VMX: Prevent RSB underflow before vmenter

On VMX, there are some balanced returns between the time the guest's SPEC_CTRL value is written, and the vmenter.

Balanced returns (matched by a preceding call) are usually ok, but it's at least theoretically possible an NMI with a deep call stack could empty the RSB before one of the returns.

For maximum paranoia, don't allow *any* returns (balanced or otherwise) between the SPEC_CTRL write and the vmenter.

[ bp: Fix 32-bit build. ]

Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-49610?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2022-49610?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2022-49610 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-49610 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

• CVE-2026-53266 Linux Kernel Out-of-Bounds Write Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2013-6282 Linux Kernel Improper Input Validation Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2022-0185 Linux Kernel Heap-Based Buffer Overflow Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2013-2094 Linux Kernel Privilege Escalation Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2026-53362 Linux Kernel Unspecified Exploited High 7.8

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as AZL-68717, DEBIAN-CVE-2022-49610, GHSA-4w6c-74px-57rx, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2022-49610, UBUNTU-CVE-2022-49610.