CVE-2026-23554: Use after free of paging structures in EPT

Published Mar 17, 2026
·
Updated

The Intel EPT paging code uses an optimization to defer flushing of any cached EPT state until the p2m lock is dropped, so that multiple modifications done under the same locked region only issue a single flush. Freeing of paging structures however is not deferred until the flushing is done, and can result in freed pages transiently being present in cached state. Such stale entries can point to memory ranges not owned by the guest, thus allowing access to unintended memory regions.

Affected Software

2 affected components
Xen Project Xen
XEN Xen>=4.17

Event History

Mar 23, 2026
CVE Published
via MITRE·06:56 AM
Data Sourced
via MITRE·06:56 AM
Description
Data Sourced
via NVD·07:16 AM
RemedyDescriptionSeverityWeaknessAffected Software
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