KVM: SVM: Bump asid_generation on CPU online to avoid ASID collision after hotplug
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- published
- Whether CISA lists it in its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog: proof that attackers are using it.What do these mean? →
- Not listed in CISA KEV
- Whether working attack code is public (Exploit-DB, Metasploit, Nuclei or GitHub). Public code makes attacks easier.What do these mean? →
- None on Exploit-DB, Metasploit or GitHub
Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: KVM: SVM: Bump asid_generation on CPU online to avoid ASID collision after hotplug If a vCPU stays scheduled out (or blocked) while the last pCPU it ran on goes through a hotplug cycle (online->offline->online), and the vCPU then resumes execution on the same pCPU, then it is possible for it to run with an ASID that has now been assigned to a different vCPU, resulting in stale TLB translations being used. svm_enable_virtualization_cpu() resets asid_generation to 1 and sets next_asid to max_asid + 1 on every CPU online event, including hotplug cycles. Because next_asid starts beyond the pool boundary, the first call to new_asid() after an online event always wraps the pool, incrementing asid_generation to 2 and assigning ASIDs starting from min_asid. Consider two vCPUs from different VMs, vCPU-A pinned to CPU-X holding asid_generation=2 and ASID=N from before the hotplug event: 1. CPU-X goes offline and back online: asid_generation resets to 1, next_asid = max_asid + 1. 2. One or more vCPUs migrate to CPU-X and call new_asid(), wrapping the pool and consuming ASIDs starting from min_asid. Eventually vCPU-B from a different VM is assigned asid_generation=2, ASID=N — the same ASID that vCPU-A held before the hotplug. 3. vCPU-A enters pre_svm_run() on CPU-X: current_vmcb->cpu is unchanged so the migration branch is skipped. Its saved asid_generation=2 matches sd->asid_generation=2, so the generation check silently passes and vCPU-A continues running with ASID=N — the same ASID just freshly assigned to vCPU-B. Both vCPUs from different VMs now run on CPU-X with the same ASID, causing them to share NPT TLB entries and producing stale translations. The collision manifests as a KVM internal error (Suberror: 1, emulation failure). The NPT page fault reports a faulting GPA far outside the VM's physical memory range — a sign of stale TLB translations being used. KVM falls back to instruction emulation, which fails on FPU/XSave instructions (XRSTOR, STMXCSR) that the emulator does not implement. Fix this by incrementing asid_generation instead of resetting it to 1 in svm_enable_virtualization_cpu(). On module load, asid_generation starts at 0 (memset) and the increment produces 1, identical to the old behaviour. On subsequent hotplug cycles the generation advances beyond any value a vCPU previously observed on this CPU, so the generation check in pre_svm_run() reliably forces new_asid() on every vCPU after every hotplug cycle.
Timeline
- CVE published
- Record last updated
Affected versions
- Linux Linux
Version range not reported
- Linux Linux
2.6.21