SB20261022223 - NULL pointer dereference in Linux kernel hyp nvhe

Description

This security bulletin contains information about 1 vulnerability.

1) NULL pointer dereference (CVE-ID: CVE-2026-98637)

CWE-ID: CWE-476 - NULL Pointer Dereference

CVSSv4: 6.8 [CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N]

The vulnerability allows a local user to cause a denial of service.

The vulnerability exists due to inconsistent VM-wide SVE feature state leading to a NULL pointer dereference in the Linux kernel's arm64 protected KVM implementation when handling an SVE initialization failure. A local user can trigger floating-point access in a guest on a subsequently registered vCPU to cause a denial of service, as SVE setup is skipped and sve_load_state() receives a NULL sve_state pointer.

Remediation

Install update from vendor's website.

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a1b3c788ad31837e348075e93dbba3f447492776
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/bd46b41f412fb81c50bac1a0929ec31320f3a807
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f0cd8ffae092cc1b9d7cfa9188ed5a88a374adcb