CVE-2026-80853 KVM: SEV: Allocate full pages for {DE,EN}CRYPT ops on SNP-enabled hosts
A local attacker with high privileges can cause a kernel crash on SEV-SNP enabled hosts by triggering RMP violations during guest memory encryption operations.
- 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-2026-80853?
CVE-2026-80853 is a denial of service vulnerability in Linux, published on 4 Sep 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: SEV: Allocate full pages for {DE,EN}CRYPT ops on SNP-enabled hosts
When {de,en}crypting memory of an SEV or SEV-ES guest on an SNP-enabled host via a temporary buffer, allocate a full 4KiB page for the buffer to ensure the page containing the buffer is wholly owned by KVM, i.e. won't be concurrently allocated and accessed by other kernel code while KVM is using the buffer to {de,en}crypt memory. On SNP-enabled platforms, when sending SEV/SEV-ES commands that trigger firmware writes to memory, the to-be-written page(s) must be (temporarily) assigned to Firmware (as required by the SNP architecture, to guard against using such commands as gadgets to attack SNP guests). See snp_map_cmd_buf_desc() and friends.
Unfortunately, transferring ownership of a page to Firmware makes the page inaccessible to software, and thus writes generate RMP #PF violations. If KVM uses a sub-page allocation for its temporary buffer, some other actor in the kernel can allocate and use the other portions of the page, and thus trigger unexpected (and seemingly spurious) RMP #PF violations due to software attempting to access a Firmware-owned page.
BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: ffff906ae30f0300 #PF: supervisor write access in kernel mode #PF: error_code(0x80000003) - RMP violation PGD 6b1b80d067 P4D 6b1b80d067 PUD 100231e2063 PMD 10055a88063 PTE 80000100630f0163 SEV-SNP: PFN 0x100630f0 unassigned, dumping non-zero entries in 2M PFN region: [0x10063000 - 0x10063200] Oops: Oops: 0003 [#1] SMP CPU: 70 UID: 0 PID: 10658 Comm: svw_WaiterThrea Tainted: G U W O 7.1.0-smp--c22293789940-seanjc-next #1 PREEMPTLAZY Tainted: [U]=USER, [W]=WARN, [O]=OOT_MODULE Hardware name: Google, Inc. Arcadia_IT_80/Arcadia_IT_80, BIOS 34.86.0-102 01/25/2026 RIP: 0010:memset+0xf/0x20 Call Trace: <TASK> __kvmalloc_node_noprof+0x2a4/0x710 do_getxattr+0x4e/0x130 path_getxattrat+0x125/0x1b0 do_syscall_64+0x10a/0x480 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x4b/0x53 RIP: 0033:0x7f3a22cb6daa </TASK> Modules linked in: kvm_amd kvm irqbypass vfat fat ccp k10temp sha3 libsha3 i2c_piix4 gq(O) cdc_acm xhci_pci xhci_hcd gsmi: Log Shutdown Reason 0x03 CR2: ffff906ae30f0300 ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]--- RIP: 0010:memset+0xf/0x20 Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception Kernel Offset: 0x39e00000 from 0xffffffff81000000 (relocation range: 0xffffffff80000000-0xffffffffbfffffff) gsmi: Log Shutdown Reason 0x02
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-80853?
How do I fix CVE-2026-80853?
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-2026-80853 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-80853 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as GHSA-g73p-24rg-vmh3, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-80853.