CVE-2026-89956

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

s390/vfio-ap: Fix missing lock required to access list of ap_matrix_mdev objects

In order to traverse or add/remove ap_matrix_mdev objects in the matrix_dev->mdev_list, the matrix_dev->guests_lock mutex must be held. There are two functions that access the list without holding the mutex:

vfio_ap_mdev_probe function

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The vfio_ap_mdev_probe function uses the matrix_dev->mdevs_lock
mutex to guard the add of a newly created ap_matrix_mdev object to the
matrix_dev->mdev_list. This mutex does not protect list access; its purpose
is to guard against concurrent access to fields contained in an
ap_matrix_mdev object. This could lead to kernel memory corruption or
use-after-free if another mdev is created or removed concurrently.

The adding of an ap_matrix_mdev object to matrix_dev->mdev_list
is now guarded by the matrix_dev->guests_lock which is the correct
way to protect against concurrent mdev_list access.

Also removed the following two lines of code because the matrix_mdev is
allocated via vfio_alloc_device macro which uses kzalloc, so req_trigger
and cfg_chg_trigger are already zero-initialised when the struct is
allocated before the call to vfio_register_emulated_iommu_dev. This
prevents a window whereby these triggers are set to NULL after
the device is exposed to userspace.

matrix_mdev->req_trigger = NULL;
matrix_mdev->cfg_chg_trigger = NULL;

vfio_ap_mdev_for_queue function

The status_show function that supports display of the status attribute of the devices in /sys/bus/ap/devices calls the vfio_ap_mdev_for_queue function which iterates the matrix_dev->mdev_list to find the object representing the queue device whose status is to be displayed. In order to traverse this list, the matrix_dev->guests_lock mutex must be held.

To fix this, the guests_lock mutex is taken prior to taking the matrix_dev->mdevs_lock mutex in the status_show function. It is taken there rather than the vfio_ap_mdev_for_queue function - where it is needed - because it must be taken prior to the mdevs_lock mutex in order to adhere to the proper locking order and prevent a lockdep splat; also because the mdevs_lock is needed there to access fields within the matrix_mdev object in that function.

See the vfio-ap-locking.rst in the linux kernel tree.

Affected Software

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0fd74477d05743d4cd9b25a3b667daa278d53b93
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/530ee1cc71562b6799b9ece187b6c1b757a2c6fa
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/647916988272fe5ecb4bb30cd02b51af9960618a
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7fa61c29850d05e40ca9ed41bfdf57673023f581