CVE-2026-52959 Affecting kernel-kvmsmall package, versions <6.12.0-160000.37.1


Severity

Recommended
0.0
medium
0
10

Based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server security rating.

Threat Intelligence

EPSS
0.11% (2nd percentile)

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  • Snyk IDSNYK-SLES1600-KERNELKVMSMALL-19322926
  • published27 Aug 2026
  • disclosed11 Aug 2026

Introduced: 11 Aug 2026

NewCVE-2026-52959  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

Upgrade SLES:16.0.0 kernel-kvmsmall to version 6.12.0-160000.37.1 or higher.

NVD Description

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream kernel-kvmsmall package and not the kernel-kvmsmall package as distributed by SLES. See How to fix? for SLES:16.0.0 relevant fixed versions and status.

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

virt: sev-guest: Do not use host-controlled page order in cleanup path

When issuing an extended guest request (SVM_VMGEXIT_EXT_GUEST_REQUEST), get_ext_report() allocates a buffer to retrieve a certificate blob from the host, keeping track of its size in report_req->certs_len.

However, the host may return SNP_GUEST_VMM_ERR_INVALID_LEN, indicating an invalid buffer size, as well as the expected length of such buffer. get_ext_report() subsequently updates report_req->certs_len with the host-controlled value, and cleans up the buffer by computing a page order from such value. This is incorrect, as the host-provided length may not match the page order of the original allocation, potentially resulting in corruption in the page allocator.

Fix this by using alloc_pages_exact() instead, and reusing @npages to compute the size passed to free_pages_exact(). For consistency, also use @npages to compute the size when allocating the pages, even though this last change has no functional effect.

CVSS Base Scores

version 3.1