Cyber Resilience

CVE-2026-31479

High

Published: 22 April 2026

Published
22 April 2026
Modified
27 April 2026
KEV Added
Patch
CVSS Score v3.1 7.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
EPSS Score 0.0001 3.5th percentile
Risk Priority 16 60% EPSS · 20% KEV · 20% CVSS

Summary

CVE-2026-31479 is a high-severity an unspecified weakness vulnerability in Linux Linux Kernel. Its CVSS base score is 7.8 (High).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068); ranked at the 3.5th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 SI-2 (Flaw Remediation) and SI-11 (Error Handling).

Deeper analysis

CVE-2026-31479 is a vulnerability in the Linux kernel's Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) Xe driver, specifically within the xe_vm.c file handling VM bind ioctl unwind operations. The issue arises during 3D workloads when rebinding in the middle of a virtual memory area (VMA), where compatible mapped ends are skipped, leading to incorrect prev/next tracking being nulled and unmap VA range shrinkage. This results in invalid or overlapping VMAs upon unwind, triggering kernel warnings such as those observed in vm_bind_ioctl_ops_unwind and potentially leaving the VM in a corrupted state.

A local attacker with low privileges (PR:L) can exploit this vulnerability with low attack complexity (AC:L) and no user interaction (UI:N) in an unprivileged scope (S:U). Successful exploitation could achieve high impacts on confidentiality, integrity, and availability (C:H/I:H/A:H), such as kernel crashes, denial of service, or memory corruption by crafting bind ioctl sequences that trigger the unwind path, including vectors involving multiple binds that interact with the affected VA ranges.

Kernel stable patches address the issue by ensuring consistent prev/next tracking for skipped cases, relying on checks rather than nulling pointers, and undoing unmap VA shrinkage on the unwind path to restore the original range before re-insertion. Relevant commits include 5eda8001ebb5269755608d678dd1f3928ab077c9, bfe9e314d7574d1c5c851972e7aee342733819d2, ccd41f110c608b3cc347b9be881c3e72cd634b2b, and e6ba1749549e87b83c0c4885d84b543687c3740e, cherry-picked from upstream aec6969f75afbf4e01fd5fb5850ed3e9c27043ac. Security practitioners should update to kernels incorporating these fixes.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability details

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: drm/xe: always keep track of remap prev/next During 3D workload, user is reporting hitting: [ 413.361679] WARNING: drivers/gpu/drm/xe/xe_vm.c:1217 at vm_bind_ioctl_ops_unwind+0x1e2/0x2e0 [xe], CPU#7: vkd3d_queue/9925 [ 413.361944] CPU: 7 UID: 1000 PID:…

more

9925 Comm: vkd3d_queue Kdump: loaded Not tainted 7.0.0-070000rc3-generic #202603090038 PREEMPT(lazy) [ 413.361949] RIP: 0010:vm_bind_ioctl_ops_unwind+0x1e2/0x2e0 [xe] [ 413.362074] RSP: 0018:ffffd4c25c3df930 EFLAGS: 00010282 [ 413.362077] RAX: 0000000000000000 RBX: ffff8f3ee817ed10 RCX: 0000000000000000 [ 413.362078] RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: 0000000000000000 RDI: 0000000000000000 [ 413.362079] RBP: ffffd4c25c3df980 R08: 0000000000000000 R09: 0000000000000000 [ 413.362081] R10: 0000000000000000 R11: 0000000000000000 R12: ffff8f41fbf99380 [ 413.362082] R13: ffff8f3ee817e968 R14: 00000000ffffffef R15: ffff8f43d00bd380 [ 413.362083] FS: 00000001040ff6c0(0000) GS:ffff8f4696d89000(0000) knlGS:00000000330b0000 [ 413.362085] CS: 0010 DS: 002b ES: 002b CR0: 0000000080050033 [ 413.362086] CR2: 00007ddfc4747000 CR3: 00000002e6262005 CR4: 0000000000f72ef0 [ 413.362088] PKRU: 55555554 [ 413.362089] Call Trace: [ 413.362092] <TASK> [ 413.362096] xe_vm_bind_ioctl+0xa9a/0xc60 [xe] Which seems to hint that the vma we are re-inserting for the ops unwind is either invalid or overlapping with something already inserted in the vm. It shouldn't be invalid since this is a re-insertion, so must have worked before. Leaving the likely culprit as something already placed where we want to insert the vma. Following from that, for the case where we do something like a rebind in the middle of a vma, and one or both mapped ends are already compatible, we skip doing the rebind of those vma and set next/prev to NULL. As well as then adjust the original unmap va range, to avoid unmapping the ends. However, if we trigger the unwind path, we end up with three va, with the two ends never being removed and the original va range in the middle still being the shrunken size. If this occurs, one failure mode is when another unwind op needs to interact with that range, which can happen with a vector of binds. For example, if we need to re-insert something in place of the original va. In this case the va is still the shrunken version, so when removing it and then doing a re-insert it can overlap with the ends, which were never removed, triggering a warning like above, plus leaving the vm in a bad state. With that, we need two things here: 1) Stop nuking the prev/next tracking for the skip cases. Instead relying on checking for skip prev/next, where needed. That way on the unwind path, we now correctly remove both ends. 2) Undo the unmap va shrinkage, on the unwind path. With the two ends now removed the unmap va should expand back to the original size again, before re-insertion. v2: - Update the explanation in the commit message, based on an actual IGT of triggering this issue, rather than conjecture. - Also undo the unmap shrinkage, for the skip case. With the two ends now removed, the original unmap va range should expand back to the original range. v3: - Track the old start/range separately. vma_size/start() uses the va info directly. (cherry picked from commit aec6969f75afbf4e01fd5fb5850ed3e9c27043ac)

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI

T1068 Exploitation for Privilege Escalation Privilege Escalation
Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities in an attempt to elevate privileges.
T1499.004 Application or System Exploitation Impact
Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities that can cause an application or system to crash and deny availability to users.
Why these techniques?

Local kernel memory corruption in DRM Xe driver (via crafted VM bind ioctls) directly enables T1068 for privilege escalation to kernel context and T1499.004 for system crash/DoS via invalid VMA state and unwind path.

Confidence: HIGH · MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise v18.1

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2026-31558Same product: Linux Linux Kernel
CVE-2025-21680Same product: Linux Linux Kernel
CVE-2026-31419Same product: Linux Linux Kernel
CVE-2026-23350Same product: Linux Linux Kernel
CVE-2025-21647Same product: Linux Linux Kernel
CVE-2025-21791Same product: Linux Linux Kernel
CVE-2026-31502Same product: Linux Linux Kernel
CVE-2025-21883Same product: Linux Linux Kernel
CVE-2026-31548Same product: Linux Linux Kernel
CVE-2026-31485Same product: Linux Linux Kernel

Affected Assets

linux
linux kernel
6.8, 7.0 · 6.8.1 — 6.12.80 · 6.13 — 6.18.21 · 6.19 — 6.19.11

Mitigating Controls

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

prevent

Applying stable kernel patches that ensure consistent prev/next tracking and undo unmap VA shrinkage directly remediates the VMA corruption in the Xe driver's VM bind ioctl unwind.

prevent

Implementing secure error handling logic during VM bind ioctl unwind operations prevents invalid VMA re-insertion and overlapping from incorrect pointer nulling.

prevent

Memory protection safeguards mitigate kernel memory corruption risks from invalid or overlapping VMAs triggered by crafted bind ioctl sequences.

References