CVE-2026-99017
Received
Received - Intake
RISCV ALTERNATIVE_EARLY Mitigation for THEAD GHOSTWRITE
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-99017, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-10-23
Last updated on: 2026-10-23
Assigner: kernel.org
Description
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
riscv: errata: select RISCV_ALTERNATIVE_EARLY for THEAD GHOSTWRITE
errata_probe_ghostwrite() only marks the CPU as vulnerable when it is
called at the RISCV_ALTERNATIVES_EARLY_BOOT stage, and the mitigation
in ghostwrite_enable_mitigation() only takes effect if the vulnerable
state was recorded before the boot alternatives are patched.
The early boot stage is only executed when CONFIG_RISCV_ALTERNATIVE_EARLY
is enabled, which currently is only selected by ERRATA_THEAD_MAE. In a
kernel built with ERRATA_THEAD_GHOSTWRITE=y but ERRATA_THEAD_MAE=n, the
early alternatives never run, so ghostwrite_state is never set to
VULNERABLE: ghostwrite_enable_mitigation() returns false, xtheadvector
remains enabled, and sysfs reports "Not affected" on a vulnerable
T-Head C9xx CPU.
Select RISCV_ALTERNATIVE_EARLY from ERRATA_THEAD_GHOSTWRITE so that the
vulnerability is detected in the early boot stage and the default
mitigation is applied.
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
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| Percentile: |
Meta Information
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
KEV
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-UNKNOWN |
