Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

KVM: x86/pmu: Disable support for adaptive PEBS

Drop support for virtualizing adaptive PEBS, as KVM's implementation is
architecturally broken without an obvious/easy path forward, and because
exposing adaptive PEBS can leak host LBRs to the guest, i.e. can leak
host kernel addresses to the guest.

Bug #1 is that KVM doesn't account for the upper 32 bits of
IA32_FIXED_CTR_CTRL when (re)programming fixed counters, e.g
fixed_ctrl_field() drops the upper bits, reprogram_fixed_counters()
stores local variables as u8s and truncates the upper bits too, etc.

Bug #2 is that, because KVM _always_ sets precise_ip to a non-zero value
for PEBS events, perf will _always_ generate an adaptive record, even if
the guest requested a basic record. Note, KVM will also enable adaptive
PEBS in individual *counter*, even if adaptive PEBS isn't exposed to the
guest, but this is benign as MSR_PEBS_DATA_CFG is guaranteed to be zero,
i.e. the guest will only ever see Basic records.

Bug #3 is in perf. intel_pmu_disable_fixed() doesn't clear the upper
bits either, i.e. leaves ICL_FIXED_0_ADAPTIVE set, and
intel_pmu_enable_fixed() effectively doesn't clear ICL_FIXED_0_ADAPTIVE
either. I.e. perf _always_ enables ADAPTIVE counters, regardless of what
KVM requests.

Bug #4 is that adaptive PEBS *might* effectively bypass event filters set
by the host, as "Updated Memory Access Info Group" records information
that might be disallow...

Classification

CVE ID: CVE-2024-26992

Affected Products

Vendor: Linux

Product: Linux

Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS)

EPSS Score: 0.05% (probability of being exploited)

EPSS Percentile: 17.83% (scored less or equal to compared to others)

EPSS Date: 2025-02-04 (when was this score calculated)

References

https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0fb74c00d140a66128afc0003785dcc57e69d312
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/037e48ceccf163899374b601afb6ae8d0bf1d2ac
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7a7650b3ac23e5fc8c990f00e94f787dc84e3175
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/9e985cbf2942a1bb8fcef9adc2a17d90fd7ca8ee

Timeline