CVE-2026-97988 vhost: invalidate vring access on IOTLB transitions
A race condition in the Linux kernel vhost driver allows stale ring mappings during IOTLB transitions, potentially leading to code execution or privilege escalation.
- 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-2026-97988?
CVE-2026-97988 is a vulnerability in Linux, published on 25 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:
vhost: invalidate vring access on IOTLB transitions
When VIRTIO_F_ACCESS_PLATFORM changes, cached vring pointers and IOTLB metadata are interpreted in a different address space. Keeping them across the transition can leave stale ring mappings in use.
Clearing d->iotlb before taking the VQ locks also lets a worker observe a transient NULL d->iotlb and fall back to d->umem while translating a descriptor.
Add a common vhost_clear_device_iotlb() helper for vhost-net and vhost-vsock. Take all VQ mutexes in index order before dropping the device-wide IOTLB, invalidate each VQ's cached ring access and metadata, clear pending IOTLB messages, and free the old table after the handoff. This serializes the transition with workers and prevents mixed address space mappings.
On the first direct-to-IOTLB transition, invalidate the cached vring addresses. When an existing device IOTLB is replaced, preserve the GIOVA ring addresses and reset only the metadata cache. After clearing ACCESS_PLATFORM, userspace must configure the vring addresses for the new address mode.
vhost_vq_invalidate_access() clears desc, avail, and used together. Treat the VQ as invalidated only when all three are NULL, since a single GIOVA address may legitimately be zero.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-97988?
How do I fix CVE-2026-97988?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Is CVE-2026-97988 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-97988 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as AZL-104721, BELL-CVE-2026-97988, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-97988, GHSA-xcf7-28q5-2jrx, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-97988.