Overview
About vulnerability
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
KVM: SVM: Flush pages under kvm->lock to fix UAF in svm_register_enc_region()
Do the cache flush of converted pages in svm_register_enc_region() before dropping kvm->lock to fix use-after-free issues where region and/or its array of pages could be freed by a different task, e.g. if userspace has __unregister_enc_region_locked() already queued up for the region.
Note, the “obvious” alternative of using local variables doesn’t fully resolve the bug, as region->pages is also dynamically allocated. I.e. the region structure itself would be fine, but region->pages could be freed.
Flushing multiple pages under kvm->lock is unfortunate, but the entire flow is a rare slow path, and the manual flush is only needed on CPUs that lack coherency for encrypted memory.
Details
- Affected product:
- AlmaLinux 9.2 ESU , CentOS 6 ELS , CentOS 7 ELS , CentOS 8.4 ELS , CentOS 8.5 ELS , CentOS Stream 8 ELS , CloudLinux 6 ELS , CloudLinux 7 ELS , Oracle Linux 6 ELS
- Affected packages:
- kernel @ 2.6.32 (+9 more)
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
KVM: SVM: Flush pages under kvm->lock to fix UAF in svm_register_enc_region()
Do the cache flush of converted pages in svm_register_enc_region() before dropping kvm->lock to fix use-after-free issues where region and/or its array of pages could be freed by a different task, e.g. if userspace has __unregister_enc_region_locked() already queued up for the region.
Note, the “obvious” alternative of using local variables doesn’t fully resolve the bug, as region->pages is also dynamically allocated. I.e. the region structure itself would be fine, but region->pages could be freed.
Flushing multiple pages under kvm->lock is unfortunate, but the entire flow is a rare slow path, and the manual flush is only needed on CPUs that lack coherency for encrypted memory.