CVE-2025-23135 RISC-V: KVM: Teardown riscv specific bits after kvm_exit

Medium 5.5 Published 16 Apr 2025 Updated 21 Oct 2026

Improper teardown order in RISC-V KVM causes kernel warnings and prevents module reloading, leading to denial of service.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Any signed-in user
Attackable: Local or same network only
Victim action needed: Not needed
Fix: Available

What is CVE-2025-23135?

CVE-2025-23135 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 16 Apr 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:

RISC-V: KVM: Teardown riscv specific bits after kvm_exit

During a module removal, kvm_exit invokes arch specific disable call which disables AIA. However, we invoke aia_exit before kvm_exit resulting in the following warning. KVM kernel module can't be inserted afterwards due to inconsistent state of IRQ.

[25469.031389] percpu IRQ 31 still enabled on CPU0! [25469.031732] WARNING: CPU: 3 PID: 943 at kernel/irq/manage.c:2476 __free_percpu_irq+0xa2/0x150 [25469.031804] Modules linked in: kvm(-) [25469.031848] CPU: 3 UID: 0 PID: 943 Comm: rmmod Not tainted 6.14.0-rc5-06947-g91c763118f47-dirty #2 [25469.031905] Hardware name: riscv-virtio,qemu (DT) [25469.031928] epc : __free_percpu_irq+0xa2/0x150 [25469.031976] ra : __free_percpu_irq+0xa2/0x150 [25469.032197] epc : ffffffff8007db1e ra : ffffffff8007db1e sp : ff2000000088bd50 [25469.032241] gp : ffffffff8131cef8 tp : ff60000080b96400 t0 : ff2000000088baf8 [25469.032285] t1 : fffffffffffffffc t2 : 5249207570637265 s0 : ff2000000088bd90 [25469.032329] s1 : ff60000098b21080 a0 : 037d527a15eb4f00 a1 : 037d527a15eb4f00 [25469.032372] a2 : 0000000000000023 a3 : 0000000000000001 a4 : ffffffff8122dbf8 [25469.032410] a5 : 0000000000000fff a6 : 0000000000000000 a7 : ffffffff8122dc10 [25469.032448] s2 : ff60000080c22eb0 s3 : 0000000200000022 s4 : 000000000000001f [25469.032488] s5 : ff60000080c22e00 s6 : ffffffff80c351c0 s7 : 0000000000000000 [25469.032582] s8 : 0000000000000003 s9 : 000055556b7fb490 s10: 00007ffff0e12fa0 [25469.032621] s11: 00007ffff0e13e9a t3 : ffffffff81354ac7 t4 : ffffffff81354ac7 [25469.032664] t5 : ffffffff81354ac8 t6 : ffffffff81354ac7 [25469.032698] status: 0000000200000100 badaddr: ffffffff8007db1e cause: 0000000000000003 [25469.032738] [<ffffffff8007db1e>] __free_percpu_irq+0xa2/0x150 [25469.032797] [<ffffffff8007dbfc>] free_percpu_irq+0x30/0x5e [25469.032856] [<ffffffff013a57dc>] kvm_riscv_aia_exit+0x40/0x42 [kvm] [25469.033947] [<ffffffff013b4e82>] cleanup_module+0x10/0x32 [kvm] [25469.035300] [<ffffffff8009b150>] __riscv_sys_delete_module+0x18e/0x1fc [25469.035374] [<ffffffff8000c1ca>] syscall_handler+0x3a/0x46 [25469.035456] [<ffffffff809ec9a4>] do_trap_ecall_u+0x72/0x134 [25469.035536] [<ffffffff809f5e18>] handle_exception+0x148/0x156

Invoke aia_exit and other arch specific cleanup functions after kvm_exit so that disable gets a chance to be called first before exit.

Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-23135?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2025-23135?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2025-23135 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-23135 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as AZL-69640, BELL-CVE-2025-23135, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-23135, GHSA-r89q-j67g-cqcj, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-13-CVE-2025-23135, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2404-CVE-2025-23135 and 1 more.