CVE-2023-52514

Published: March 5, 2024Last modified: June 17, 2025

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: x86/reboot: VMCLEAR active VMCSes before emergency reboot VMCLEAR active VMCSes before any emergency reboot, not just if the kernel may kexec into a new kernel after a crash. Per Intel's SDM, the VMX architecture doesn't require the CPU to flush the VMCS cache on INIT. If an emergency reboot doesn't RESET CPUs, cached VMCSes could theoretically be kept and only be written back to memory after the new kernel is booted, i.e. could effectively corrupt memory after reboot. Opportunistically remove the setting of the global pointer to NULL to make checkpatch happy.

Status

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/1375d9600c38c231163de584656b07aef9a27b0d
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/65edea77d7006140c6290e7f46009d75e02d3273
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/b23c83ad2c638420ec0608a9de354507c41bec29