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HistoryMay 22, 2024 - 12:00 a.m.

CVE-2021-47465

2024-05-2200:00:00
ubuntu.com
ubuntu.com
1
linux kernel
kvm
stack handling

6.7 Medium

AI Score

Confidence

High

0.0004 Low

EPSS

Percentile

15.5%

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: KVM:
PPC: Book3S HV: Fix stack handling in idle_kvm_start_guest() In commit
10d91611f426 (“powerpc/64s: Reimplement book3s idle code in C”)
kvm_start_guest() became idle_kvm_start_guest(). The old code allocated a
stack frame on the emergency stack, but didn’t use the frame to store
anything, and also didn’t store anything in its caller’s frame.
idle_kvm_start_guest() on the other hand is written more like a normal C
function, it creates a frame on entry, and also stores CR/LR into its
callers frame (per the ABI). The problem is that there is no caller frame
on the emergency stack. The emergency stack for a given CPU is allocated
with: paca_ptrs[i]->emergency_sp = alloc_stack(limit, i) + THREAD_SIZE; So
emergency_sp actually points to the first address above the emergency stack
allocation for a given CPU, we must not store above it without first
decrementing it to create a frame. This is different to the regular kernel
stack, paca->kstack, which is initialised to point at an initial frame that
is ready to use. idle_kvm_start_guest() stores the backchain, CR and LR all
of which write outside the allocation for the emergency stack. It then
creates a stack frame and saves the non-volatile registers. Unfortunately
the frame it creates is not large enough to fit the non-volatiles, and so
the saving of the non-volatile registers also writes outside the emergency
stack allocation. The end result is that we corrupt whatever is at 0-24
bytes, and 112-248 bytes above the emergency stack allocation. In practice
this has gone unnoticed because the memory immediately above the emergency
stack happens to be used for other stack allocations, either another CPUs
mc_emergency_sp or an IRQ stack. See the order of calls to
irqstack_early_init() and emergency_stack_init(). The low addresses of
another stack are the top of that stack, and so are only used if that stack
is under extreme pressue, which essentially never happens in practice - and
if it did there’s a high likelyhood we’d crash due to that stack
overflowing. Still, we shouldn’t be corrupting someone else’s stack, and it
is purely luck that we aren’t corrupting something else. To fix it we save
CR/LR into the caller’s frame using the existing r1 on entry, we then
create a SWITCH_FRAME_SIZE frame (which has space for pt_regs) on the
emergency stack with the backchain pointing to the existing stack, and then
finally we switch to the new frame on the emergency stack.

6.7 Medium

AI Score

Confidence

High

0.0004 Low

EPSS

Percentile

15.5%