x86: Missing SMAP whitelisting in 32-bit exception / event delivery

2016-07-2611:32:00

Xen Project

xenbits.xen.org

6.2 Medium

CVSS3

Attack Vector

LOCAL

Attack Complexity

LOW

Privileges Required

NONE

User Interaction

NONE

Scope

UNCHANGED

Confidentiality Impact

NONE

Integrity Impact

NONE

Availability Impact

HIGH

CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

4.9 Medium

CVSS2

Access Vector

LOCAL

Access Complexity

LOW

Authentication

NONE

Confidentiality Impact

NONE

Integrity Impact

NONE

Availability Impact

COMPLETE

AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:C

0.002 Low

EPSS

Percentile

54.8%

JSON

ISSUE DESCRIPTION

Supervisor Mode Access Prevention is a hardware feature designed to make an Operating System more robust, by raising a pagefault rather than accidentally following a pointer into userspace. However, legitimate accesses into userspace require whitelisting, and the exception delivery mechanism for 32bit PV guests wasn’t whitelisted.

IMPACT

A malicious 32-bit PV guest kernel can trigger a safety check, crashing the hypervisor and causing a denial of service to other VMs on the host.

VULNERABLE SYSTEMS

Xen version 4.5 and newer are vulnerable. Versions 4.4 and older are not, due to not having software support for SMAP.
The vulnerability is only exposed on x86 hardware supporting the SMAP feature (Intel Broadwell and later CPUs). The vulnerability is not exposed on ARM hardware, or x86 hardware which do not support SMAP.
The vulnerability is only exposed to x86 32bit PV guests. The vulnerability is not exposed to 64bit PV guests or HVM guests.