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Unrated severityNVD Advisory· Published Jul 3, 2025· Updated Jul 28, 2025

arm64/fpsimd: Avoid clobbering kernel FPSIMD state with SMSTOP

CVE-2025-38169

Description

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

arm64/fpsimd: Avoid clobbering kernel FPSIMD state with SMSTOP

On system with SME, a thread's kernel FPSIMD state may be erroneously clobbered during a context switch immediately after that state is restored. Systems without SME are unaffected.

If the CPU happens to be in streaming SVE mode before a context switch to a thread with kernel FPSIMD state, fpsimd_thread_switch() will restore the kernel FPSIMD state using fpsimd_load_kernel_state() while the CPU is still in streaming SVE mode. When fpsimd_thread_switch() subsequently calls fpsimd_flush_cpu_state(), this will execute an SMSTOP, causing an exit from streaming SVE mode. The exit from streaming SVE mode will cause the hardware to reset a number of FPSIMD/SVE/SME registers, clobbering the FPSIMD state.

Fix this by calling fpsimd_flush_cpu_state() before restoring the kernel FPSIMD state.

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Affected products

38

Patches

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