The vulnerability arises when the kernel clears a scalable-mode IOMMU context entry while the Present bit remains set, allowing the hardware to fetch a partially zeroed entry that still appears present. This race between writes and hardware fetch can result in unpredictable behavior or spurious faults, which may manifest as system crashes, data corruption, or denial of service. The flaw follows a classic concurrency issue in the IOMMU subsystem and is catalogued as CWE-367.

All Linux kernels that have not incorporated the commit c1e4f1dccbe9d or newer patches to the iommu/vt-d subsystem are affected. The vulnerability applies to any system using Intel VT-d passthrough or scalable-mode context handling, regardless of vendor distribution, since the kernel itself is the host.

The CVSS score of 9.3 identifies the problem as critical. The EPSS score of < 1 % indicates a very low but non‑zero likelihood of exploitation, and the vulnerability is not listed in the CISA KEV catalog. Based on the description, it is inferred that the attack vector is local, requiring privileged kernel access or control over passthrough configuration. An attacker would need privileged kernel access or the ability to influence passthrough configuration to trigger the race, potentially causing unstable I/O operations or intermittent faults; however, the data do not indicate a path to arbitrary code execution.