published December 30, 2025
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
x86/hyperv: Disable IBT when hypercall page lacks ENDBR instruction
On hardware that supports Indirect Branch Tracking (IBT), Hyper-V VMs
with ConfigVersion 9.3 or later support IBT in the guest. However,
current versions of Hyper-V have a bug in that there's not an ENDBR64
instruction at the beginning of the hypercall page. Since hypercalls are
made with an indirect call to the hypercall page, all hypercall attempts
fail with an exception and Linux panics.
A Hyper-V fix is in progress to add ENDBR64. But guard against the Linux
panic by clearing X86_FEATURE_IBT if the hypercall page doesn't start
with ENDBR. The VM will boot and run without IBT.
If future Linux 32-bit kernels were to support IBT, additional hypercall
page hackery would be needed to make IBT work for such kernels in a
Hyper-V VM.