In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: s390: Revert support for DCACHE_WORD_ACCESS load_unaligned_zeropad() reads eight bytes from unaligned addresses and may cross page boundaries

Overview

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

s390: Revert support for DCACHE_WORD_ACCESS

load_unaligned_zeropad() reads eight bytes from unaligned addresses and may cross page boundaries. It handles exceptions which may happen if reading from the second page results in an exception.

For pages which are donated to the Ultravisor for secure execution purposes the do_secure_storage_access() exception handler however does not handle such exceptions correctly. Such an exception may result in an endless exception loop which will never be resolved.

An attempt to fix this [1] turned out to be not sufficient. For now revert load_unaligned_zeropad() until this problem has been resolved in a proper way.

Note that the implementation of load_unaligned_zeropad() itself is correct. The revert is just a temporary workaround until there is complete fix for secure storage access exceptions.

[1] commit b00be77302d7 ("s390/mm: Add missing secure storage access fixups for donated memory")

Affected

• linux_kernel >= 6.7, < 6.12.97
• linux_kernel >= 6.13, < 6.18.39
• linux_kernel >= 6.19, < 7.1.4

Remediation

Upgrade past the affected range:

• linux_kernel 7.1.4

Vendor advisories

• Red Hat VEX · Moderate · affected: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 · no fix planned: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 · updated 2026-09-08 · vex