CVE-2025-21632x86/fpu: Ensure shadow stack is active before "getting" registers

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: x86/fpu: Ensure shadow stack is active before "getting" registers The x86 shadow stack support has its own set of registers. Those registers are XSAVE-managed, but they are "supervisor state components" which means that userspace can not touch them with XSAVE/XRSTOR. It also means that they are not accessible from the existing ptrace ABI for XSAVE state. Thus, there is a new ptrace get/set interface for it. The regset code that ptrace uses provides an ->active() handler in addition to the get/set ones. For shadow stack this ->active() handler verifies that shadow stack is enabled via the ARCH_SHSTK_SHSTK bit in the thread struct. The ->active() handler is checked from some call sites of the regset get/set handlers, but not the ptrace ones. This was not understood when shadow stack support was put in place. As a result, both the set/get handlers can be called with XFEATURE_CET_USER in its init state, which would cause get_xsave_addr() to return NULL and trigger a WARN_ON(). The ssp_set() handler luckily has an ssp_active() check to avoid surprising the kernel with shadow stack behavior when the kernel is not ready for it (ARCH_SHSTK_SHSTK==0). That check just happened to avoid the warning. But the ->get() side wasn't so lucky. It can be called with shadow stacks disabled, triggering the warning in practice, as reported by Christina Schimpe: WARNING: CPU: 5 PID: 1773 at arch/x86/kernel/fpu/regset.c:198 ssp_get+0x89/0xa0 [...] Call Trace: <TASK> ? show_regs+0x6e/0x80 ? ssp_get+0x89/0xa0 ? __warn+0x91/0x150 ? ssp_get+0x89/0xa0 ? report_bug+0x19d/0x1b0 ? handle_bug+0x46/0x80 ? exc_invalid_op+0x1d/0x80 ? asm_exc_invalid_op+0x1f/0x30 ? __pfx_ssp_get+0x10/0x10 ? ssp_get+0x89/0xa0 ? ssp_get+0x52/0xa0 __regset_get+0xad/0xf0 copy_regset_to_user+0x52/0xc0 ptrace_regset+0x119/0x140 ptrace_request+0x13c/0x850 ? wait_task_inactive+0x142/0x1d0 ? do_syscall_64+0x6d/0x90 arch_ptrace+0x102/0x300 [...] Ensure that shadow stacks are active in a thread before looking them up in the XSAVE buffer. Since ARCH_SHSTK_SHSTK and user_ssp[SHSTK_EN] are set at the same time, the active check ensures that there will be something to find in the XSAVE buffer. [ dhansen: changelog/subject tweaks ]

Timeline

Scores

EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)

0.21% · top 89% of all CVEs (13 Nov 2026)

CISA SSVC

Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial

The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: Medium 5.5.

Affected products

• Linux · Linux

  • affected 2fab02b25ae7cf5f714ab456b03d9a3fe5ae98c9 – < 0a3a872214188e4268d31581ed0cd44508e038cf
  • affected 2fab02b25ae7cf5f714ab456b03d9a3fe5ae98c9 – < 6bfe1fc22f462bec87422cdcbec4d7a2f43ff01d
  • affected 2fab02b25ae7cf5f714ab456b03d9a3fe5ae98c9 – < a9d9c33132d49329ada647e4514d210d15e31d81

• Linux · Linux

  • affected 6.6
  • unaffected < 6.6
  • unaffected 6.6.72 – ≤ 6.6.*
  • unaffected 6.12.10 – ≤ 6.12.*
  • unaffected 6.13 – ≤ *

Sources

The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.

• CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
• CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
• NVD (opens in a new tab)
• FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
• EUVD EUVD-2025-2581 (opens in a new tab)
• OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
• GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
• CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)

Badge for a README or a ticket

[![CVE-2025-21632](https://cveledger.app/badge/CVE-2025-21632.svg)](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2025-21632)

Record last updated 5 Nov 2026, 20:41 UTC.