Bug 2356917 (CVE-2025-21991) - CVE-2025-21991 kernel: x86/microcode/AMD: Fix out-of-bounds on systems with CPU-less NUMA nodes
Summary: CVE-2025-21991 kernel: x86/microcode/AMD: Fix out-of-bounds on systems with C...
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: CVE-2025-21991
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Product Security DevOps Team
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2025-04-02 14:02 UTC by OSIDB Bzimport
Modified: 2025-04-02 14:51 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2025-04-02 14:02:35 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

x86/microcode/AMD: Fix out-of-bounds on systems with CPU-less NUMA nodes

Currently, load_microcode_amd() iterates over all NUMA nodes, retrieves their
CPU masks and unconditionally accesses per-CPU data for the first CPU of each
mask.

According to Documentation/admin-guide/mm/numaperf.rst:

  "Some memory may share the same node as a CPU, and others are provided as
  memory only nodes."

Therefore, some node CPU masks may be empty and wouldn't have a "first CPU".

On a machine with far memory (and therefore CPU-less NUMA nodes):
- cpumask_of_node(nid) is 0
- cpumask_first(0) is CONFIG_NR_CPUS
- cpu_data(CONFIG_NR_CPUS) accesses the cpu_info per-CPU array at an
  index that is 1 out of bounds

This does not have any security implications since flashing microcode is
a privileged operation but I believe this has reliability implications by
potentially corrupting memory while flashing a microcode update.

When booting with CONFIG_UBSAN_BOUNDS=y on an AMD machine that flashes
a microcode update. I get the following splat:

  UBSAN: array-index-out-of-bounds in arch/x86/kernel/cpu/microcode/amd.c:X:Y
  index 512 is out of range for type 'unsigned long[512]'
  [...]
  Call Trace:
   dump_stack
   __ubsan_handle_out_of_bounds
   load_microcode_amd
   request_microcode_amd
   reload_store
   kernfs_fop_write_iter
   vfs_write
   ksys_write
   do_syscall_64
   entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe

Change the loop to go over only NUMA nodes which have CPUs before determining
whether the first CPU on the respective node needs microcode update.

  [ bp: Massage commit message, fix typo. ]


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