CVE-2025-38062

Technical Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

genirq/msi: Store the IOMMU IOVA directly in msi_desc instead of iommu_cookie

The IOMMU translation for MSI message addresses has been a 2-step process,

separated in time:

1) iommu_dma_prepare_msi(): A cookie pointer containing the IOVA address

is stored in the MSI descriptor when an MSI interrupt is allocated.

2) iommu_dma_compose_msi_msg(): this cookie pointer is used to compute a

translated message address.

This has an inherent lifetime problem for the pointer stored in the cookie

that must remain valid between the two steps. However, there is no locking

at the irq layer that helps protect the lifetime. Today, this works under

the assumption that the iommu domain is not changed while MSI interrupts

being programmed. This is true for normal DMA API users within the kernel,

as the iommu domain is attached before the driver is probed and cannot be

changed while a driver is attached.

Classic VFIO type1 a

Remediation

Check the references section for vendor advisories and patches from linux. Update linux_kernel to the latest patched version. If immediate patching is not possible, review the CVSS vector to understand the attack surface and apply compensating controls such as network segmentation or access restrictions.

Affected Products

References