CVE-2025-38170 — arm64/fpsimd: Discard stale CPU state when handling SME traps

Affected: Linux

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

arm64/fpsimd: Discard stale CPU state when handling SME traps

The logic for handling SME traps manipulates saved FPSIMD/SVE/SME state incorrectly, and a race with preemption can result in a task having TIF_SME set and TIF_FOREIGN_FPSTATE clear even though the live CPU state is stale (e.g. with SME traps enabled). This can result in warnings from do_sme_acc() where SME traps are not expected while TIF_SME is set:

| /* With TIF_SME userspace shouldn't generate any traps */ | if (test_and_set_thread_flag(TIF_SME)) | WARN_ON(1);

This is very similar to the SVE issue we fixed in commit:

751ecf6afd6568ad ("arm64/sve: Discard stale CPU state when handling SVE traps")

The race can occur when the SME trap handler is preempted before and after manipulating the saved FPSIMD/SVE/SME state, starting and ending on the same CPU, e.g.

| void do_sme_acc(unsigned long esr, struct pt_regs *regs) | { | // Trap on CPU 0 with TIF_SME clear, SME traps enabled | // task->fpsimd_cpu is 0. | // per_cpu_ptr(&fpsimd_last_state, 0) is task. | | ... | | // Preempted; migrated from CPU 0 to CPU 1. | // TIF_FOREIGN_FPSTATE is set. | | get_cpu_fpsimd_context(); | | /* With TIF_SME userspace shouldn't generate any traps */ | if (test_and_set_thread_flag(TIF_SME)) | WARN_ON(1); | | if (!test_thread_flag(TIF_FOR…

Most recent entries from all

CVE-2025-38170 — arm64/fpsimd: Discard stale CPU state when handling SME traps