High · published October 28, 2025
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
iommu/vt-d: Disallow dirty tracking if incoherent page walk
Dirty page tracking relies on the IOMMU atomically updating the dirty bit
in the paging-structure entry. For this operation to succeed, the paging-
structure memory must be coherent between the IOMMU and the CPU. In
another word, if the iommu page walk is incoherent, dirty page tracking
doesn't work.
The Intel VT-d specification, Section 3.10 "Snoop Behavior" states:
"Remapping hardware encountering the need to atomically update A/EA/D bits
in a paging-structure entry that is not snooped will result in a non-
recoverable fault."
To prevent an IOMMU from being incorrectly configured for dirty page
tracking when it is operating in an incoherent mode, mark SSADS as
supported only when both ecap_slads and ecap_smpwc are supported.