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CVE-2026-53164

Status: AnalyzedMedium (5.5)—

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

iommu/dma: Do not try to iommu_map a 0 length region in swiotlb

iommu_dma_iova_link_swiotlb() processes a mapping that is unaligned in three parts, the head, middle and trailer. If the middle is empty because there are no aligned pages it will call down to iommu_map() with a 0 size which the iommupt implementation will fail as illegal.

It then tries to do an error unwind and starts from the wrong spot corrupting the mapping so the eventual destruction triggers a WARN_ON.

Check for 0 length and avoid mapping and use offset not 0 as the starting point to unlink.

Read full descriptionShow less

This is frequently triggered by using some kinds of thunderbolt NVMe drives that trigger forced SWIOTLB for unaligned memory. NVMe seems to pass in oddly aligned buffers for the passthrough commands from smartctl that hit this condition.

CVSS

Exploitation probability (EPSS)

EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System, FIRST) estimates how likely a vulnerability is to be exploited in the wild within 30 days. It complements CVSS (impact) and CISA KEV (confirmed exploitation).

Affected technologies (1)

Linux — Linux Kernel

CWEs

References

Raw JSON (NVD)

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      "value": "In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:\n\niommu/dma: Do not try to iommu_map a 0 length region in swiotlb\n\niommu_dma_iova_link_swiotlb() processes a mapping that is unaligned in three\nparts, the head, middle and trailer. If the middle is empty because there\nare no aligned pages it will call down to iommu_map() with a 0 size\nwhich the iommupt implementation will fail as illegal.\n\nIt then tries to do an error unwind and starts from the wrong spot\ncorrupting the mapping so the eventual destruction triggers a WARN_ON.\n\nCheck for 0 length and avoid mapping and use offset not 0 as the starting\npoint to unlink.\n\nThis is frequently triggered by using some kinds of thunderbolt NVMe\ndrives that trigger forced SWIOTLB for unaligned memory. NVMe seems to\npass in oddly aligned buffers for the passthrough commands from smartctl\nthat hit this condition."
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