Overview
About vulnerability
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
perf/x86/amd/brs: Fix kernel address leakage
A user-only branch stack can contain branches that originate from the kernel. As a result, kernel addresses are exposed to user space even when PERF_SAMPLE_BRANCH_USER is requested. On AMD processors supporting X86_FEATURE_BRS (Zen 3 only), perf can still report entries such as SYSRET/interrupt returns for which the branch-from addresses are in the kernel.
E.g.
$ perf record -j any,u -c 4000 -e branch-brs -o - –
perf bench syscall basic –loop 1000 |
perf script -i - -F brstack|tr ’ ’ ‘\n’|
grep -E ‘0x[89a-f][0-9a-f]{15}’
… 0xffffffff810001c4/0x72e2e32955eb/-/-/-/0//- 0xffffffff810001c4/0x72e2d94a9821/-/-/-/0//- 0xffffffff810001c4/0x72e2d94ffa1b/-/-/-/0//- …
BRS provides no hardware branch filtering, so privilege level filtering is performed entirely in software. However, amd_brs_match_plm() only validates the branch-to address against the requested privilege levels. For branches from the kernel to user space, the branch-from address is left unchecked and is leaked. Extend the software filter to also validate the branch-from address, so that any branch record whose branch-from address is in the kernel is dropped when PERF_SAMPLE_BRANCH_USER is requested.
Details
- Affected product:
- AlmaLinux 9.2 ESU , CentOS 8.4 ELS , CentOS 8.5 ELS , CentOS Stream 8 ELS , Debian 10 ELS , TuxCare 9.6 ESU
- Affected packages:
- kernel @ 4.18.0 (+5 more)
Fixes
KernelCare state
Live-patch status from KernelCare for each operating system.
| Operating system | Status | Covered kernels |
|---|---|---|
| Debian 12 | Planned | — |