Medium (5.5) in linux linux kernel. EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
KVM: Don't null dereference ops->destroy
A KVM device cleanup happens in either of two callbacks:
1) destroy() which is called when the VM is being destroyed;
2) release() which is called when a device fd is closed.
Most KVM devices use 1) but Book3s's interrupt controller KVM devices
(XICS, XIVE, XIVE-native) use 2) as they need to close and reopen during
the machine execution. The error handling in kvm_ioctl_create_device()
assumes destroy() is always defined which leads to NULL dereference as
discovered by Syzkaller.
This adds a checks for destroy!=NULL and adds a missing release().
This is not changing kvm_destroy_devices() as devices with defined
release() should have been removed from the KVM devices list by then.
Severity
CVSS 3.1
5.5 medium
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
EPSS
0.3% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days; higher than 22% of CVEs (scores of 2026-10-31)