CVE-2026-74516 KVM: SVM: Update x2APIC MSR intercepts if AVIC is inhibited while L2 is active
A guest VM can escalate privileges and cause host denial of service by reading APIC state and sending interrupts when AVIC is inhibited during nested virtualization.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- An administrator
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-74516?
CVE-2026-74516 is a high-severity vulnerability in Linux, published on 15 Aug 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:
KVM: SVM: Update x2APIC MSR intercepts if AVIC is inhibited while L2 is active
Always update x2APIC MSR intercepts for L1 when AVIC is deactivated, even if L2 is active and KVM is using a separate MSR bitmap to run L2. If AVIC is fully enabled prior to running L2, and is then inhibited while L2 is active (for a VM-scoped inhibit), then KVM will run L1 with AVIC disabled, but with x2APIC MSR intercepts disabled, i.e. will allow L1 to read most of the host's APIC state, send arbitrary interrupts, change task priority, and ultimately trivially DoS the host.
E.g. sending a self-IPI in L1 on HYPERV_REENLIGHTENMENT_VECTOR, 0xee, with CONFIG_HYPERV=n in the host kernel as a "safe" PoC, yields:
Spurious interrupt (vector 0xee) on CPU#425. Acked
And hacking KVM to abuse kvm_set_posted_intr_wakeup_handler() to register a handler and WARN on POSTED_INTR_WAKEUP_VECTOR yields:
------------[ cut here ]------------ WARNING: arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.c:5594 at pi_wakeup_handler+0x9/0x10 [kvm_amd], CPU#156: nested_x2apic_t/316940 CPU: 156 UID: 0 PID: 316940 Comm: nested_x2apic_t Tainted: G S U Tainted: [S]=CPU_OUT_OF_SPEC, [U]=USER Hardware name: Google Astoria-Turin/astoria, BIOS 0.20260209.0-0 02/09/2026 RIP: 0010:pi_wakeup_handler+0x9/0x10 [kvm_amd] Call Trace: <IRQ> sysvec_kvm_posted_intr_wakeup_ipi+0x64/0x80 </IRQ> <TASK> asm_sysvec_kvm_posted_intr_wakeup_ipi+0x1a/0x20 RIP: 0010:vcpu_run+0x1430/0x1e40 [kvm] kvm_arch_vcpu_ioctl_run+0x2c1/0x600 [kvm] kvm_vcpu_ioctl+0x580/0x6b0 [kvm] __se_sys_ioctl+0x6d/0xb0 do_syscall_64+0x10a/0x480 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x4b/0x53 RIP: 0033:0x46ff4b </TASK> ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]---
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-74516?
How do I fix CVE-2026-74516?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Is CVE-2026-74516 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-74516 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as AZL-96150, BELL-CVE-2026-74516, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-74516, GHSA-p473-wqx8-95rq, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-74516.