CVE Watchtower

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CVE-2025-40300NVD

Vulnerability Summary

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

x86/vmscape: Add conditional IBPB mitigation

VMSCAPE is a vulnerability that exploits insufficient branch predictor
isolation between a guest and a userspace hypervisor (like QEMU). Existing
mitigations already protect kernel/KVM from a malicious guest. Userspace
can additionally be protected by flushing the branch predictors after a
VMexit.

Since it is the userspace that consumes the poisoned branch predictors,
conditionally issue an IBPB after a VMexit and before returning to
userspace. Workloads that frequently switch between hypervisor and
userspace will incur the most overhead from the new IBPB.

This new IBPB is not integrated with the existing IBPB sites. For
instance, a task can use the existing speculation control prctl() to
get an IBPB at context switch time. With this implementation, the
IBPB is doubled up: one at context switch and another before running
userspace.

The intent is to integrate and optimize these cases post-embargo.

[ dhansen: elaborate on suboptimal IBPB solution ]
Severity Level
MEDIUM(5.5)
Published Date
Sep 11, 2025
Last Modified
Oct 19, 2026
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation yet
EPSS Score (30-Day)
0.38%Probability
Root Weakness (CWE)
N/A
CVSS v3.1 Base Metrics — Score 5.5 (MEDIUM)
Attack VectorLocal
Attack ComplexityLow
Privileges RequiredLow
User InteractionNone
ScopeUnchanged
ConfidentialityNone
IntegrityNone
AvailabilityHigh

Affected & Patched Versions

Affected Versions
  • Linux Linux Kernel >= 3.16.57 and < 3.17
  • Linux Linux Kernel >= 4.4.168 and < 4.5
  • Linux Linux Kernel >= 4.16 and < 5.10.244
  • Linux Linux Kernel >= 5.11 and < 5.15.193
  • Linux Linux Kernel >= 5.16 and < 6.1.152
  • Linux Linux Kernel >= 6.2 and < 6.6.106
  • Linux Linux Kernel >= 6.7 and < 6.12.47
  • Linux Linux Kernel >= 6.13 and < 6.16.7
  • Linux Linux Kernel
  • Debian Debian Linux
Patched Versions
  • Linux Linux Kernel 3.17
  • Linux Linux Kernel 4.5
  • Linux Linux Kernel 5.10.244
  • Linux Linux Kernel 5.15.193
  • Linux Linux Kernel 6.1.152
  • Linux Linux Kernel 6.6.106
  • Linux Linux Kernel 6.12.47
  • Linux Linux Kernel 6.16.7
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🎁7-Day Free Trial — Try Pro or Team, no card required.
📧Email Delivery — Threat intel straight to your inbox.
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🚨All New CVEs — Be the first to know.
📈EPSS Spike Alerts — Catch rising risk before it peaks.
🎯Custom EPSS/CVSS — Filter noise, focus on risk.
🛡️Exploit Intel — A 2nd confirmed-exploit signal beyond KEV.
🐙GitHub Issues — Auto-tracked, no duplicates.
📬Weekly Digest — One clean summary, not inbox spam.
🏷️Watchlist Groups — Tag alerts by team (Infra/AppSec/SOC).
💬Webhooks — Slack & Teams integration.
🔀Smart Routing — Critical alerts to one channel, rest to another.
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External References