# CVE-2025-38351: KVM: x86/hyper-v: Skip non-canonical addresses during PV TLB flush

> A malicious guest can trigger a kernel warning and potential denial of service by passing non-canonical addresses to Hyper-V TLB flush hypercalls on Intel systems.

- **Severity:** Medium 5.5 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **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:** Yes
- **Published:** 19 Jul 2025
- **Updated:** 11 May 2026
- **Also known as:** BELL-CVE-2025-38351, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-38351, GHSA-x77v-68j6-p42v, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2404-CVE-2025-38351, UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38351

## What is CVE-2025-38351?

CVE-2025-38351 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 19 Jul 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: x86/hyper-v: Skip non-canonical addresses during PV TLB flush

In KVM guests with Hyper-V hypercalls enabled, the hypercalls
HVCALL_FLUSH_VIRTUAL_ADDRESS_LIST and HVCALL_FLUSH_VIRTUAL_ADDRESS_LIST_EX
allow a guest to request invalidation of portions of a virtual TLB.
For this, the hypercall parameter includes a list of GVAs that are supposed
to be invalidated.

However, when non-canonical GVAs are passed, there is currently no
filtering in place and they are eventually passed to checked invocations of
INVVPID on Intel / INVLPGA on AMD.  While AMD's INVLPGA silently ignores
non-canonical addresses (effectively a no-op), Intel's INVVPID explicitly
signals VM-Fail and ultimately triggers the WARN_ONCE in invvpid_error():

  invvpid failed: ext=0x0 vpid=1 gva=0xaaaaaaaaaaaaa000
  WARNING: CPU: 6 PID: 326 at arch/x86/kvm/vmx/vmx.c:482
  invvpid_error+0x91/0xa0 [kvm_intel]
  Modules linked in: kvm_intel kvm 9pnet_virtio irqbypass fuse
  CPU: 6 UID: 0 PID: 326 Comm: kvm-vm Not tainted 6.15.0 #14 PREEMPT(voluntary)
  RIP: 0010:invvpid_error+0x91/0xa0 [kvm_intel]
  Call Trace:
    vmx_flush_tlb_gva+0x320/0x490 [kvm_intel]
    kvm_hv_vcpu_flush_tlb+0x24f/0x4f0 [kvm]
    kvm_arch_vcpu_ioctl_run+0x3013/0x5810 [kvm]

Hyper-V documents that invalid GVAs (those that are beyond a partition's
GVA space) are to be ignored.  While not completely clear whether this
ruling also applies to non-canonical GVAs, it is likely fine to make that
assumption, and manual testing on Azure confirms "real" Hyper-V interprets
the specification in the same way.

Skip non-canonical GVAs when processing the list of address to avoid
tripping the INVVPID failure.  Alternatively, KVM could filter out "bad"
GVAs before inserting into the FIFO, but practically speaking the only
downside of pushing validation to the final processing is that doing so
is suboptimal for the guest, and no well-behaved guest will request TLB
flushes for non-canonical addresses.

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-38351?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Linux kernel.

## How do I fix CVE-2025-38351?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2025-38351 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-38351 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

- [CVE-2026-53266](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-53266/): Linux Kernel Out-of-Bounds Write (high 8.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2013-6282](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2013-6282/): Linux Kernel Improper Input Validation (high 8.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2022-0185](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-0185/): Linux Kernel Heap-Based Buffer Overflow (high 8.4, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2013-2094](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2013-2094/): Linux Kernel Privilege Escalation (high 8.4, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2026-53362](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-53362/): Linux Kernel Unspecified (high 7.8, exploited in the wild)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2025-38351 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2025-38351 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 19 Jul 2025. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-38351 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Linux kernel. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-38351/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-38351/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-38351
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-38351
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2025-38351

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-38351/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.