CVE-2026-43477 drm/i915/vrr: Configure VRR timings after enabling TRANS_DDI_FUNC_CTL

Medium 5.5 Published 13 May 2026 Updated 13 May 2026

A race condition in the Intel i915 graphics driver can cause a system hang or machine check exception when configuring VRR timings, 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-2026-43477?

CVE-2026-43477 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 13 May 2026. 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:

drm/i915/vrr: Configure VRR timings after enabling TRANS_DDI_FUNC_CTL

Apparently ICL may hang with an MCE if we write TRANS_VRR_VMAX/FLIPLINE before enabling TRANS_DDI_FUNC_CTL.

Personally I was only able to reproduce a hang (on an Dell XPS 7390 2-in-1) with an external display connected via a dock using a dodgy type-C cable that made the link training fail. After the failed link training the machine would hang. TGL seemed immune to the problem for whatever reason.

BSpec does tell us to configure VRR after enabling TRANS_DDI_FUNC_CTL as well. The DMC firmware also does the VRR restore in two stages: - first stage seems to be unconditional and includes TRANS_VRR_CTL and a few other VRR registers, among other things - second stage is conditional on the DDI being enabled, and includes TRANS_DDI_FUNC_CTL and TRANS_VRR_VMAX/VMIN/FLIPLINE, among other things

So let's reorder the steps to match to avoid the hang, and toss in an extra WARN to make sure we don't screw this up later.

BSpec: 22243 (cherry picked from commit 93f3a267c3dd4d811b224bb9e179a10d81456a74)

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-43477?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2026-43477?

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-2026-43477 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-43477 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as BELL-CVE-2026-43477, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-43477, GHSA-f8p8-wjf5-jrx9, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-43477.