Sean Christopherson e6ff1d61de KVM: VMX: Handle MMIO Stale Data in VM-Enter assembly via ALTERNATIVES_2
Rework the handling of the MMIO Stale Data mitigation to clear CPU buffers
immediately prior to VM-Enter, i.e. in the same location that KVM emits a
VERW for unconditional (at runtime) clearing.  Co-locating the code and
using a single ALTERNATIVES_2 makes it more obvious how VMX mitigates the
various vulnerabilities.

Deliberately order the alternatives as:

 0. Do nothing
 1. Clear if vCPU can access MMIO
 2. Clear always

since the last alternative wins in ALTERNATIVES_2(), i.e. so that KVM will
honor the strictest mitigation (always clear CPU buffers) if multiple
mitigations are selected.  E.g. even if the kernel chooses to mitigate
MMIO Stale Data via X86_FEATURE_CLEAR_CPU_BUF_VM_MMIO, another mitigation
may enable X86_FEATURE_CLEAR_CPU_BUF_VM, and that other thing needs to win.

Note, decoupling the MMIO mitigation from the L1TF mitigation also fixes
a mostly-benign flaw where KVM wouldn't do any clearing/flushing if the
L1TF mitigation is configured to conditionally flush the L1D, and the MMIO
mitigation but not any other "clear CPU buffers" mitigation is enabled.
For that specific scenario, KVM would skip clearing CPU buffers for the
MMIO mitigation even though the kernel requested a clear on every VM-Enter.

Note #2, the flaw goes back to the introduction of the MDS mitigation.  The
MDS mitigation was inadvertently fixed by commit 43fb862de8 ("KVM/VMX:
Move VERW closer to VMentry for MDS mitigation"), but previous kernels
that flush CPU buffers in vmx_vcpu_enter_exit() are affected (though it's
unlikely the flaw is meaningfully exploitable even older kernels).

Fixes: 650b68a062 ("x86/kvm/vmx: Add MDS protection when L1D Flush is not active")
Suggested-by: Pawan Gupta <pawan.kumar.gupta@linux.intel.com>
Reviewed-by: Pawan Gupta <pawan.kumar.gupta@linux.intel.com>
Reviewed-by: Brendan Jackman <jackmanb@google.com>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20251113233746.1703361-6-seanjc@google.com
Signed-off-by: Sean Christopherson <seanjc@google.com>
2025-11-18 16:22:42 -08:00
2025-10-17 13:02:22 +02:00
2022-09-28 09:02:20 +02:00
2025-02-19 14:53:27 -07:00
2025-10-19 15:19:16 -10:00
2024-03-18 03:36:32 -06:00

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the reStructuredText markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.
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