N/A - CVE-2025-37957

Executive Summary

Informations
Name	CVE-2025-37957	First vendor Publication	2025-05-20
Vendor	Cve	Last vendor Modification	2025-05-22

Security-Database Scoring CVSS v3

Cvss vector : N/A
Overall CVSS Score	NA
Base Score	NA	Environmental Score	NA
impact SubScore	NA	Temporal Score	NA
Exploitabality Sub Score	NA

Calculate full CVSS 3.0 Vectors scores

Security-Database Scoring CVSS v2

Cvss vector :
Cvss Base Score	N/A	Attack Range	N/A
Cvss Impact Score	N/A	Attack Complexity	N/A
Cvss Expoit Score	N/A	Authentication	N/A
Calculate full CVSS 2.0 Vectors scores

Detail

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

KVM: SVM: Forcibly leave SMM mode on SHUTDOWN interception

Previously, commit ed129ec9057f ("KVM: x86: forcibly leave nested mode on vCPU reset") addressed an issue where a triple fault occurring in nested mode could lead to use-after-free scenarios. However, the commit did not handle the analogous situation for System Management Mode (SMM).

This omission results in triggering a WARN when KVM forces a vCPU INIT after SHUTDOWN interception while the vCPU is in SMM. This situation was reprodused using Syzkaller by:

1) Creating a KVM VM and vCPU
2) Sending a KVM_SMI ioctl to explicitly enter SMM
3) Executing invalid instructions causing consecutive exceptions and
eventually a triple fault

The issue manifests as follows:

WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 25506 at arch/x86/kvm/x86.c:12112
kvm_vcpu_reset+0x1d2/0x1530 arch/x86/kvm/x86.c:12112
Modules linked in:
CPU: 0 PID: 25506 Comm: syz-executor.0 Not tainted
6.1.130-syzkaller-00157-g164fe5dde9b6 #0
Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996),
BIOS 1.12.0-1 04/01/2014
RIP: 0010:kvm_vcpu_reset+0x1d2/0x1530 arch/x86/kvm/x86.c:12112
Call Trace:

shutdown_interception+0x66/0xb0 arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.c:2136
svm_invoke_exit_handler+0x110/0x530 arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.c:3395
svm_handle_exit+0x424/0x920 arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.c:3457
vcpu_enter_guest arch/x86/kvm/x86.c:10959 [inline]
vcpu_run+0x2c43/0x5a90 arch/x86/kvm/x86.c:11062
kvm_arch_vcpu_ioctl_run+0x50f/0x1cf0 arch/x86/kvm/x86.c:11283
kvm_vcpu_ioctl+0x570/0xf00 arch/x86/kvm/../../../virt/kvm/kvm_main.c:4122
vfs_ioctl fs/ioctl.c:51 [inline]
__do_sys_ioctl fs/ioctl.c:870 [inline]
__se_sys_ioctl fs/ioctl.c:856 [inline]
__x64_sys_ioctl+0x19a/0x210 fs/ioctl.c:856
do_syscall_x64 arch/x86/entry/common.c:51 [inline]
do_syscall_64+0x35/0x80 arch/x86/entry/common.c:81
entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x6e/0xd8

Architecturally, INIT is blocked when the CPU is in SMM, hence KVM's WARN() in kvm_vcpu_reset() to guard against KVM bugs, e.g. to detect improper emulation of INIT. SHUTDOWN on SVM is a weird edge case where KVM needs to do _something_ sane with the VMCB, since it's technically undefined, and INIT is the least awful choice given KVM's ABI.

So, double down on stuffing INIT on SHUTDOWN, and force the vCPU out of SMM to avoid any weirdness (and the WARN).

Found by Linux Verification Center (linuxtesting.org) with Syzkaller.

[sean: massage changelog, make it clear this isn't architectural behavior]