Vulnerabilities
- CVSS
- 5.5 Medium
- Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H- EPSS
- 0.10%
- Risk score
- 0.5
- Published
- 2026-02-14
- Status
- Published
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
arm64/fpsimd: ptrace: Fix SVE writes on !SME systems
When SVE is supported but SME is not supported, a ptrace write to the
NT_ARM_SVE regset can place the tracee into an invalid state where
(non-streaming) SVE register data is stored in FP_STATE_SVE format but
TIF_SVE is clear. This can result in a later warning from
fpsimd_restore_current_state(), e.g.
WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 7214 at arch/arm64/kernel/fpsimd.c:383 fpsimd_restore_current_state+0x50c/0x748
When this happens, fpsimd_restore_current_state() will set TIF_SVE,
placing the task into the correct state. This occurs before any other
check of TIF_SVE can possibly occur, as other checks of TIF_SVE only
happen while the FPSIMD/SVE/SME state is live. Thus, aside from the
warning, there is no functional issue.
This bug was introduced during rework to error handling in commit:
9f8bf718f2923 ("arm64/fpsimd: ptrace: Gracefully handle errors")
... where the setting of TIF_SVE was moved into a block which is only
executed when system_supports_sme() is true.
Fix this by removing the system_supports_sme() check. This ensures that
TIF_SVE is set for (SVE-formatted) writes to NT_ARM_SVE, at the cost of
unconditionally manipulating the tracee's saved svcr value. The
manipulation of svcr is benign and inexpensive, and we already do
similar elsewhere (e.g. during signal handling), so I don't think it's
worth guarding this with system_supports_sme() checks.
Aside from the above, there is no functional change. The 'type' argument
to sve_set_common() is only set to ARM64_VEC_SME (in ssve_set())) when
system_supports_sme(), so the ARM64_VEC_SME case in the switch statement
is still unreachable when !system_supports_sme(). When
CONFIG_ARM64_SME=n, the only caller of sve_set_common() is sve_set(),
and the compiler can constant-fold for the case where type is
ARM64_VEC_SVE, removing the logic for other cases.
A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's arm64 floating-point/SIMD state management. On systems with SVE but without SME support, a ptrace write to the NT_ARM_SVE regset can leave the tracee in an inconsistent state where SVE data is stored but the TIF_SVE flag is not set. This triggers a kernel warning in fpsimd_restore_current_state(), though the function self-corrects by setting the flag before any observable issue occurs.
Coverage 3
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