CVE-2025-71104

Source
https://cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-71104
Import Source
https://storage.googleapis.com/cve-osv-conversion/osv-output/CVE-2025-71104.json
JSON Data
https://api.osv.dev/v1/vulns/CVE-2025-71104
Downstream
BELL (1)
DEBIAN (1)
ECHO (1)
MGASA (2)
OESA (4)
openSUSE (1)
ROOT (5)
SUSE (18)
UBUNTU (1)
Related
Published
2026-01-14T15:05:53Z
Modified
2026-10-16T02:30:33Z
Summary
KVM: x86: Fix VM hard lockup after prolonged inactivity with periodic HV timer
Details

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

KVM: x86: Fix VM hard lockup after prolonged inactivity with periodic HV timer

When advancing the target expiration for the guest's APIC timer in periodic mode, set the expiration to "now" if the target expiration is in the past (similar to what is done in update_target_expiration()). Blindly adding the period to the previous target expiration can result in KVM generating a practically unbounded number of hrtimer IRQs due to programming an expired timer over and over. In extreme scenarios, e.g. if userspace pauses/suspends a VM for an extended duration, this can even cause hard lockups in the host.

Currently, the bug only affects Intel CPUs when using the hypervisor timer (HV timer), a.k.a. the VMX preemption timer. Unlike the software timer, a.k.a. hrtimer, which KVM keeps running even on exits to userspace, the HV timer only runs while the guest is active. As a result, if the vCPU does not run for an extended duration, there will be a huge gap between the target expiration and the current time the vCPU resumes running. Because the target expiration is incremented by only one period on each timer expiration, this leads to a series of timer expirations occurring rapidly after the vCPU/VM resumes.

More critically, when the vCPU first triggers a periodic HV timer expiration after resuming, advancing the expiration by only one period will result in a target expiration in the past. As a result, the delta may be calculated as a negative value. When the delta is converted into an absolute value (tscdeadline is an unsigned u64), the resulting value can overflow what the HV timer is capable of programming. I.e. the large value will exceed the VMX Preemption Timer's maximum bit width of cpu_preemption_timer_multi + 32, and thus cause KVM to switch from the HV timer to the software timer (hrtimers).

After switching to the software timer, periodic timer expiration callbacks may be executed consecutively within a single clock interrupt handler, because hrtimers honors KVM's request for an expiration in the past and immediately re-invokes KVM's callback after reprogramming. And because the interrupt handler runs with IRQs disabled, restarting KVM's hrtimer over and over until the target expiration is advanced to "now" can result in a hard lockup.

E.g. the following hard lockup was triggered in the host when running a Windows VM (only relevant because it used the APIC timer in periodic mode) after resuming the VM from a long suspend (in the host).

NMI watchdog: Watchdog detected hard LOCKUP on cpu 45 ... RIP: 0010:advance_periodic_target_expiration+0x4d/0x80 [kvm] ... RSP: 0018:ff4f88f5d98d8ef0 EFLAGS: 00000046 RAX: fff0103f91be678e RBX: fff0103f91be678e RCX: 00843a7d9e127bcc RDX: 0000000000000002 RSI: 0052ca4003697505 RDI: ff440d5bfbdbd500 RBP: ff440d5956f99200 R08: ff2ff2a42deb6a84 R09: 000000000002a6c0 R10: 0122d794016332b3 R11: 0000000000000000 R12: ff440db1af39cfc0 R13: ff440db1af39cfc0 R14: ffffffffc0d4a560 R15: ff440db1af39d0f8 FS: 00007f04a6ffd700(0000) GS:ff440db1af380000(0000) knlGS:000000e38a3b8000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: 000000d5651feff8 CR3: 000000684e038002 CR4: 0000000000773ee0 PKRU: 55555554 Call Trace: apic_timer_fn+0x31/0x50 [kvm] __hrtimer_run_queues+0x100/0x280 hrtimer_interrupt+0x100/0x210 ? ttwu_do_wakeup+0x19/0x160 smp_apic_timer_interrupt+0x6a/0x130 apic_timer_interrupt+0xf/0x20

Moreover, if the suspend duration of the virtual machine is not long enough to trigger a hard lockup in this scenario, since commit 98c25ead5eda ("KVM: VMX: Move preemption timer <=> hrtimer dance to common x86"), KVM will continue using the software timer until the guest reprograms the APIC timer in some way. Since the periodic timer does not require frequent APIC timer register programming, the guest may continue to use the software timer in ---truncated---

Database specific
{
    "cna_assigner":  "Linux",
    "osv_generated_from":  "https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/tree/main/cves/2025/71xxx/CVE-2025-71104.json"
}
References

Affected packages

Git / git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git

Affected ranges

Type
GIT
Repo
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git
Events
Introduced
d8f2f498d9ed0c5010bc1bbc1146f94c8bf9f8cc
Fixed
786ed625c125c5cd180d6aaa37e653e3e4ffb8d9
Fixed
d2da0df7bbc4fb4fd7d0a1da704f81a09c72fe73
Fixed
807dbe8f3862fa7c164155857550ce94b36a11b9
Fixed
7b54ccef865e0aa62e4871d4ada2ba4b9dcb8bed
Fixed
e746e51947053a02af2ea964593dc4887108d379
Fixed
e23f46f1a971c73dad2fd63e1408696114ddebe2
Fixed
18ab3fc8e880791aa9f7c000261320fc812b5465
Type
GIT
Repo
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git
Events
Introduced
4.14.45
Fixed
4.15
Type
GIT
Repo
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git
Events
Introduced
4.16.13
Fixed
4.17
Type
GIT
Repo
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git
Events
Introduced
421e1fadb0b0a648cc75afd5b3c826fa7daeaffc
Type
GIT
Repo
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git
Events
Introduced
5a69b7b69beae9bb86e7e1b095685087976cba47

Affected versions

v4.*
v4.14.100
v4.14.101
v4.14.102
v4.14.103
v4.14.104
v4.14.105
v4.14.106
v4.14.107
v4.14.108
v4.14.109
v4.14.110
v4.14.111
v4.14.112
v4.14.113
v4.14.114
v4.14.115
v4.14.116
v4.14.117
v4.14.118
v4.14.119
v4.14.120
v4.14.121
v4.14.122
v4.14.123
v4.14.124
v4.14.125
v4.14.126
v4.14.127
v4.14.128
v4.14.129
v4.14.130
v4.14.131
v4.14.132
v4.14.133
v4.14.134
v4.14.135
v4.14.136
v4.14.137
v4.14.138
v4.14.139
v4.14.140
v4.14.141
v4.14.142
v4.14.143
v4.14.144
v4.14.145
v4.14.146
v4.14.147
v4.14.148
v4.14.149
v4.14.150
v4.14.151
v4.14.152
v4.14.153
v4.14.154
v4.14.155
v4.14.156
v4.14.157
v4.14.158
v4.14.159
v4.14.160
v4.14.161
v4.14.162
v4.14.163
v4.14.164
v4.14.165
v4.14.166
v4.14.167
v4.14.168
v4.14.169
v4.14.170
v4.14.171
v4.14.172
v4.14.173
v4.14.174
v4.14.175
v4.14.176
v4.14.177
v4.14.178
v4.14.179
v4.14.180
v4.14.181
v4.14.182
v4.14.183
v4.14.184
v4.14.185
v4.14.186
v4.14.187
v4.14.188
v4.14.189
v4.14.190
v4.14.191
v4.14.192
v4.14.193
v4.14.194
v4.14.195
v4.14.196
v4.14.197
v4.14.198
v4.14.199
v4.14.200
v4.14.201
v4.14.202
v4.14.203
v4.14.204
v4.14.205
v4.14.206
v4.14.207
v4.14.208
v4.14.209
v4.14.210
v4.14.211
v4.14.212
v4.14.213
v4.14.214
v4.14.215
v4.14.216
v4.14.217
v4.14.218
v4.14.219
v4.14.220
v4.14.221
v4.14.222
v4.14.223
v4.14.224
v4.14.225
v4.14.226
v4.14.227
v4.14.228
v4.14.229
v4.14.230
v4.14.231
v4.14.232
v4.14.233
v4.14.234
v4.14.235
v4.14.236
v4.14.237
v4.14.238
v4.14.239
v4.14.240
v4.14.241
v4.14.242
v4.14.243
v4.14.244
v4.14.245
v4.14.246
v4.14.247
v4.14.248
v4.14.249
v4.14.250
v4.14.251
v4.14.252
v4.14.253
v4.14.254
v4.14.255
v4.14.256
v4.14.257
v4.14.258
v4.14.259
v4.14.260
v4.14.261
v4.14.262
v4.14.263
v4.14.264
v4.14.265
v4.14.266
v4.14.267
v4.14.268
v4.14.269
v4.14.270
v4.14.271
v4.14.272
v4.14.273
v4.14.274
v4.14.275
v4.14.276
v4.14.277
v4.14.278
v4.14.279
v4.14.280
v4.14.281
v4.14.282
v4.14.283
v4.14.284
v4.14.285
v4.14.286
v4.14.287
v4.14.288
v4.14.289
v4.14.290
v4.14.291
v4.14.292
v4.14.293
v4.14.294
v4.14.295
v4.14.296
v4.14.297
v4.14.298
v4.14.299
v4.14.300
v4.14.301
v4.14.302
v4.14.303
v4.14.304
v4.14.305
v4.14.306
v4.14.307
v4.14.308
v4.14.309
v4.14.310
v4.14.311
v4.14.312
v4.14.313
v4.14.314
v4.14.315
v4.14.316
v4.14.317
v4.14.318
v4.14.319
v4.14.320
v4.14.321
v4.14.322
v4.14.323
v4.14.324
v4.14.325
v4.14.326
v4.14.327
v4.14.328
v4.14.329
v4.14.330
v4.14.331
v4.14.332
v4.14.333
v4.14.334
v4.14.335
v4.14.336
v4.14.45
v4.14.46
v4.14.47
v4.14.48
v4.14.49
v4.14.50
v4.14.51
v4.14.52
v4.14.53
v4.14.54
v4.14.55
v4.14.56
v4.14.57
v4.14.58
v4.14.59
v4.14.60
v4.14.61
v4.14.62
v4.14.63
v4.14.64
v4.14.65
v4.14.66
v4.14.67
v4.14.68
v4.14.69
v4.14.70
v4.14.71
v4.14.72
v4.14.73
v4.14.74
v4.14.75
v4.14.76
v4.14.77
v4.14.78
v4.14.79
v4.14.80
v4.14.81
v4.14.82
v4.14.83
v4.14.84
v4.14.85
v4.14.86
v4.14.87
v4.14.88
v4.14.89
v4.14.90
v4.14.91
v4.14.92
v4.14.93
v4.14.94
v4.14.95
v4.14.96
v4.14.97
v4.14.98
v4.14.99
v4.16.13
v4.16.14
v4.16.15
v4.16.16
v4.16.17
v4.16.18

Database specific

source
"https://storage.googleapis.com/cve-osv-conversion/osv-output/CVE-2025-71104.json"

Linux / Kernel

Package

Name
Kernel

Affected ranges

Type
ECOSYSTEM
Events
Introduced
4.17.0
Fixed
5.10.248
Type
ECOSYSTEM
Events
Introduced
5.11.0
Fixed
5.15.198
Type
ECOSYSTEM
Events
Introduced
5.16.0
Fixed
6.1.160
Type
ECOSYSTEM
Events
Introduced
6.2.0
Fixed
6.6.120
Type
ECOSYSTEM
Events
Introduced
6.7.0
Fixed
6.12.64
Type
ECOSYSTEM
Events
Introduced
6.13.0
Fixed
6.18.3

Database specific

source
"https://storage.googleapis.com/cve-osv-conversion/osv-output/CVE-2025-71104.json"