Impact
The kernel correction addresses an omission in the handling of nested guest memory mapping within KVM on s390. When a nested guest page is not present in the parent gmap, the lookup fails with -ENOENT. The error was incorrectly propagated to userspace, which could lead to corrupted state or information leakage. The flaw does not grant direct code execution but can disrupt guest operation or surface unauthorized data.
Affected Systems
The affected class is the Linux kernel with KVM support for the s390 architecture. All installations running a kernel version prior to the commit that introduces gmap_link() in the shadow fault path are vulnerable. No specific vendor or product version list is provided beyond the kernel family.
Risk and Exploitability
Exact CVSS scores are not published, and no exploitation reports or KEV listing exist. Without a CVSS calculation, the severity is not formally quantified, but the flaw allows error propagation that can break guest isolation and may be exploitable by an attacker with control over nested guests. The EPSS score is unavailable, so the likelihood of imminent attack is unclear. Nonetheless, as the bug involves privileged kernel code and nested virtualization, it should be treated as a moderate to high risk until a formal assessment is available. The attack vector is likely through malformed or missing memory mappings crafted by a privileged nested guest, leading to arbitrary error propagation to the host.
OpenCVE Enrichment