Linux guests on Haswell (and also SandyBridge and Broadwell, at least)
would crash if you decided to run a host command that uses PEBS, like
perf record -e 'cpu/mem-stores/pp' -a
This happens because KVM is using VMX MSR switching to disable PEBS, but
SDM [2015-12] 18.4.4.4 Re-configuring PEBS Facilities explains why it
isn't safe:
When software needs to reconfigure PEBS facilities, it should allow a
quiescent period between stopping the prior event counting and setting
up a new PEBS event. The quiescent period is to allow any latent
residual PEBS records to complete its capture at their previously
specified buffer address (provided by IA32_DS_AREA).
There might not be a quiescent period after the MSR switch, so a CPU
ends up using host's MSR_IA32_DS_AREA to access an area in guest's
memory. (Or MSR switching is just buggy on some models.)
The guest can learn something about the host this way:
If the guest doesn't map address pointed by MSR_IA32_DS_AREA, it results
in #PF where we leak host's MSR_IA32_DS_AREA through CR2.
After that, a malicious guest can map and configure memory where
MSR_IA32_DS_AREA is pointing and can therefore get an output from
host's tracing.
This is not a critical leak as the host must initiate with PEBS tracing
and I have not been able to get a record from more than one instruction
before vmentry in vmx_vcpu_run() (that place has most registers already
overwritten with guest's).
We could disable PEBS just few instructions before vmentry, but
disabling it earlier shouldn't affect host tracing too much.
We also don't need to switch MSR_IA32_PEBS_ENABLE on VMENTRY, but that
optimization isn't worth its code, IMO.
(If you are implementing PEBS for guests, be sure to handle the case
where both host and guest enable PEBS, because this patch doesn't.)
Fixes: 26a4f3c08de4 ("perf/x86: disable PEBS on a guest entry.")
Cc: <stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reported-by: Jiří Olša <jolsa@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Radim Krčmář <rkrcmar@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
arch/x86/kvm/vmx.c | 7 +++++++
1 file changed, 7 insertions(+)
diff --git a/arch/x86/kvm/vmx.c b/arch/x86/kvm/vmx.c
index 46154dac71e6..946582f4f105 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kvm/vmx.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kvm/vmx.c
@@ -1767,6 +1767,13 @@ static void clear_atomic_switch_msr(struct vcpu_vmx *vmx, unsigned msr)
return;
}
break;
+ case MSR_IA32_PEBS_ENABLE:
+ /* PEBS needs a quiescent period after being disabled (to write
+ * a record). Disabling PEBS through VMX MSR swapping doesn't
+ * provide that period, so a CPU could write host's record into
+ * guest's memory.
+ */
+ wrmsrl(MSR_IA32_PEBS_ENABLE, 0);
}
for (i = 0; i < m->nr; ++i)
--
2.7.2
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