Bug 1144883 (CVE-2014-3610) - CVE-2014-3610 kernel: kvm: noncanonical MSR writes
Summary: CVE-2014-3610 kernel: kvm: noncanonical MSR writes
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED ERRATA
Alias: CVE-2014-3610
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
high
high
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Red Hat Product Security
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On: 1144884 1144885 1152982 1152983 1156543
Blocks: 1144830
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2014-09-21 20:12 UTC by Petr Matousek
Modified: 2023-05-12 05:28 UTC (History)
26 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
It was found that KVM's Write to Model Specific Register (WRMSR) instruction emulation would write non-canonical values passed in by the guest to certain MSRs in the host's context. A privileged guest user could use this flaw to crash the host.
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2015-04-22 11:05:10 UTC
Embargoed:

Attachments (Terms of Use)


Links
System ID Private Priority Status Summary Last Updated
Red Hat Product Errata RHSA-2015:0869 0 normal SHIPPED_LIVE Important: kvm security update 2015-04-22 14:09:46 UTC

Description Petr Matousek 2014-09-21 20:12:19 UTC 
If the guest writes a noncanonical value to certain MSR registers, KVM will
write that value to the MSR in the host context and a #GP will be raised
leading to kernel panic.

A privileged guest user can use this flaw to crash the host.

Enabling CONFIG_PARAVIRT when building the kernel mitigates this issue because wrmsrl() ends up invoking safe msr write variant.

Acknowledgements:

Red Hat would like to thank Lars Bull of Google and Nadav Amit for reporting
this issue.
Comment 5 Petr Matousek 2014-10-15 10:30:45 UTC 
Statement:

This issue does not affect Linux kernel packages as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and 7. Future kvm package updates for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 may address this issue.
Comment 6 Petr Matousek 2014-10-24 16:07:21 UTC 
Upstream patches:

http://git.kernel.org/cgit/virt/kvm/kvm.git/commit/?id=854e8bb1aa06c578c2c9145fa6bfe3680ef63b23
http://git.kernel.org/cgit/virt/kvm/kvm.git/commit/?id=8b3c3104c3f4f706e99365c3e0d2aa61b95f969f
Comment 7 Petr Matousek 2014-10-24 16:09:38 UTC 
Created kernel tracking bugs for this issue:

Affects: fedora-all [bug 1156543]
Comment 8 Fedora Update System 2014-10-28 06:44:38 UTC 
kernel-3.16.6-203.fc20 has been pushed to the Fedora 20 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
Comment 9 Fedora Update System 2014-11-03 05:22:37 UTC 
kernel-3.17.2-300.fc21 has been pushed to the Fedora 21 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
Comment 10 Fedora Update System 2014-11-16 14:46:13 UTC 
kernel-3.14.23-100.fc19 has been pushed to the Fedora 19 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
Comment 11 errata-xmlrpc 2015-04-22 10:10:36 UTC 
This issue has been addressed in the following products:

  Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

Via RHSA-2015:0869 https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2015-0869.html
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