CVE-2023-54007

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's VMCI (VMware Communication Interface) host driver. A race condition in vmci_host_poll() can cause a general protection fault when the context pointer is read before it is fully initialized. This occurs due to non-atomic reads of the context and context type fields, allowing a concurrent initialization to cause dereferencing of an uninitialized pointer.

This vulnerability affects systems running VMware virtualization with the VMCI driver. The race condition requires specific timing between poll operations and context initialization. The impact is limited to denial of service through a kernel crash in VMware guest environments.

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.

To mitigate this issue, prevent the vmw_vmci module from being loaded. See https://access.redhat.com/solutions/41278 for instructions.