Bug 2338827 (CVE-2025-21632)

Summary: CVE-2025-21632 kernel: x86/fpu: Ensure shadow stack is active before "getting" registers
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: low Docs Contact:
Priority: low    
Version: unspecifiedCC: dfreiber, drow, jburrell, vkumar
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description OSIDB Bzimport 2025-01-19 11:02:11 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

x86/fpu: Ensure shadow stack is active before "getting" registers

The x86 shadow stack support has its own set of registers. Those registers
are XSAVE-managed, but they are "supervisor state components" which means
that userspace can not touch them with XSAVE/XRSTOR.  It also means that
they are not accessible from the existing ptrace ABI for XSAVE state.
Thus, there is a new ptrace get/set interface for it.

The regset code that ptrace uses provides an ->active() handler in
addition to the get/set ones. For shadow stack this ->active() handler
verifies that shadow stack is enabled via the ARCH_SHSTK_SHSTK bit in the
thread struct. The ->active() handler is checked from some call sites of
the regset get/set handlers, but not the ptrace ones. This was not
understood when shadow stack support was put in place.

As a result, both the set/get handlers can be called with
XFEATURE_CET_USER in its init state, which would cause get_xsave_addr() to
return NULL and trigger a WARN_ON(). The ssp_set() handler luckily has an
ssp_active() check to avoid surprising the kernel with shadow stack
behavior when the kernel is not ready for it (ARCH_SHSTK_SHSTK==0). That
check just happened to avoid the warning.

But the ->get() side wasn't so lucky. It can be called with shadow stacks
disabled, triggering the warning in practice, as reported by Christina
Schimpe:

WARNING: CPU: 5 PID: 1773 at arch/x86/kernel/fpu/regset.c:198 ssp_get+0x89/0xa0
[...]
Call Trace:
<TASK>
? show_regs+0x6e/0x80
? ssp_get+0x89/0xa0
? __warn+0x91/0x150
? ssp_get+0x89/0xa0
? report_bug+0x19d/0x1b0
? handle_bug+0x46/0x80
? exc_invalid_op+0x1d/0x80
? asm_exc_invalid_op+0x1f/0x30
? __pfx_ssp_get+0x10/0x10
? ssp_get+0x89/0xa0
? ssp_get+0x52/0xa0
__regset_get+0xad/0xf0
copy_regset_to_user+0x52/0xc0
ptrace_regset+0x119/0x140
ptrace_request+0x13c/0x850
? wait_task_inactive+0x142/0x1d0
? do_syscall_64+0x6d/0x90
arch_ptrace+0x102/0x300
[...]

Ensure that shadow stacks are active in a thread before looking them up
in the XSAVE buffer. Since ARCH_SHSTK_SHSTK and user_ssp[SHSTK_EN] are
set at the same time, the active check ensures that there will be
something to find in the XSAVE buffer.

[ dhansen: changelog/subject tweaks ]

Comment 1 Avinash Hanwate 2025-01-20 06:56:36 UTC
Upstream advisory:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/2025011942-CVE-2025-21632-9fde@gregkh/T