Overview
About vulnerability
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
KVM: nSVM: Ignore nCR3[4:0] when loading PDPTEs from memory
Ignore nCR3[4:0] when loading PDPTEs from memory for nested SVM, as bits 4:0 of CR3 are ignored when PAE paging is used, and thus VMRUN doesn’t enforce 32-byte alignment of nCR3.
In the absolute worst case scenario, failure to ignore bits 4:0 can result in an out-of-bounds read, e.g. if the target page is at the end of a memslot, and the VMM isn’t using guard pages.
Per the APM:
The CR3 register points to the base address of the page-directory-pointer table. The page-directory-pointer table is aligned on a 32-byte boundary, with the low 5 address bits 4:0 assumed to be 0.
And the SDM’s much more explicit:
4:0 Ignored
Note, KVM gets this right when loading PDPTRs, it’s only the nSVM flow that is broken.
Details
- Affected product:
- AlmaLinux 9.2 ESU , CentOS 7 ELS , CentOS 8.4 ELS , CentOS 8.5 ELS , CentOS Stream 8 ELS , CloudLinux 7 ELS , Oracle Linux 7 ELS , RHEL 7 ELS , Ubuntu 16.04 ELS , Ubuntu 18.04 ELS
- Affected packages:
- linux @ 4.15.0 (+12 more)
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
KVM: nSVM: Ignore nCR3[4:0] when loading PDPTEs from memory
Ignore nCR3[4:0] when loading PDPTEs from memory for nested SVM, as bits 4:0 of CR3 are ignored when PAE paging is used, and thus VMRUN doesn’t enforce 32-byte alignment of nCR3.
In the absolute worst case scenario, failure to ignore bits 4:0 can result in an out-of-bounds read, e.g. if the target page is at the end of a memslot, and the VMM isn’t using guard pages.
Per the APM:
The CR3 register points to the base address of the page-directory-pointer table. The page-directory-pointer table is aligned on a 32-byte boundary, with the low 5 address bits 4:0 assumed to be 0.
And the SDM’s much more explicit:
4:0 Ignored
Note, KVM gets this right when loading PDPTRs, it’s only the nSVM flow that is broken.