CVE-2026-98471
Received
Received - Intake
Cache Maintenance Flaw in Linux Kernel KVM SEV
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-98471, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-10-18
Last updated on: 2026-10-18
Assigner: kernel.org
Description
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
KVM: SEV: Do cache maintenance on the source VM during intra-host migration
Manually perform cache maintenance on the source VM during intra-host
migration to ensure no stale data is left in CPU caches after the VM is
destroyed. Because the source VM is "converted" to a non-SEV VM, KVM's
memory reclaim flows won't trigger cache maintenance, e.g. when all guest
memory is reclaimed in response to detaching from the mmu_notifier.
Note, relying on the destination VM to do cache maintenance isn't an option
as KVM doesn't require identical guest memory configurations, i.e. the
source VM may have access to memory that the destination VM does not.
Enforcing equivalent memory configurations is infeasible, as it would
require a *deep* comparison of memslots, e.g. to verify that not only are
the memslot identical, but what the memslots point at is also identical.
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
| Probability: | |
| Percentile: |
Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| Linux | Linux | b56639318bb2be66aceba92836279714488709b4 |
| Linux | Linux | b56639318bb2be66aceba92836279714488709b4 |
| Linux | Linux | b56639318bb2be66aceba92836279714488709b4 |
| Linux | Linux | 5.16 |
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
KEV
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-UNKNOWN |
