CVE-2024-35804

MEDIUM
Published May 17, 2024 Modified Sep 19, 2025 CWE-401

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: KVM: x86: Mark target gfn of emulated atomic instruction as dirty When emulating an atomic access on behalf of the guest, mark the target gfn dirty if the CMPXCHG by KVM is attempted and doesn't fault. This fixes a bug where KVM effectively corrupts guest memory during live migration by writing to guest memory without informing userspace that the page is dirty. Marking the page dirty got unintentionally dropped when KVM's emulated CMPXCHG was converted to do a user access. Before that, KVM explicitly mapped the guest page into kernel memory, and marked the page dirty during the unmap phase. Mark the page dirty even if the CMPXCHG fails, as the old data is written back on failure, i.e. the page is still written. The value written is guaranteed to be the same because the operation is atomic, but KVM's ABI is that all writes are dirty logged regardless of the value written. And more importantly, that's what KVM did before the buggy commit. Huge kudos to the folks on the Cc list (and many others), who did all the actual work of triaging and debugging. base-commit: 6769ea8da8a93ed4630f1ce64df6aafcaabfce64

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CVSS v3.1 Score

5.5
MEDIUM
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Weakness Type (CWE)

CWE-401 CWE-401

Affected Products

Vendor Product
linux linux_kernel
linux linux_kernel
linux linux_kernel
linux linux_kernel
linux linux_kernel
linux linux_kernel
linux linux_kernel
linux linux_kernel
linux linux_kernel
linux linux_kernel
linux linux_kernel
linux linux_kernel

References

Frequently Asked Questions

What is CVE-2024-35804? +
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: KVM: x86: Mark target gfn of emulated atomic instruction as dirty When emulating an atomic access on behalf of the guest, mark the target gfn dirty if the CMPXCHG by KVM is attempted and doesn't fault. This fixes a bug where KVM effectively corrupts guest memory during live migration by writing to guest memory without informing userspace that the page is dirty. Marking the page dirty got unintentionally dropped when KVM's emulated CMPXCHG was converted to do a user access. Before that, KVM explicitly mapped the guest page into kernel memory, and marked the page dirty during the unmap phase. Mark the page dirty even if the CMPXCHG fails, as the old data is written back on failure, i.e. the page is still written. The value written is guaranteed to be the same because the operation is atomic, but KVM's ABI is that all writes are dirty logged regardless of the value written. And more importantly, that's what KVM did before the buggy commit. Huge kudos to the folks on the Cc list (and many others), who did all the actual work of triaging and debugging. base-commit: 6769ea8da8a93ed4630f1ce64df6aafcaabfce64 It has a CVSS v3.1 base score of 5.5 (MEDIUM).
How severe is CVE-2024-35804? +
CVE-2024-35804 has a CVSS v3.1 score of 5.5 out of 10, rated MEDIUM. This is a medium-severity vulnerability that should be remediated as part of regular maintenance.
What products are affected by CVE-2024-35804? +
CVE-2024-35804 affects products from linux, specifically: linux_kernel. Check the affected products table above for specific version ranges.
How do I check if I'm vulnerable to CVE-2024-35804? +
You can use Secably's free Website Scanner to check your website for known vulnerabilities. For infrastructure scanning, use the Port Scanner to identify exposed services that may be affected. Check the vendor advisories linked above for specific patch and version information.

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