Skip to content
OpenAdvisories
Unscored CVE-2021-47277 EUVD-2021-34282GHSA-6239-6f98-f8vf

kvm: avoid speculation-based attacks from out-of-range memslot accesses

Published May 21, 2024 · Updated May 11, 2026 · Assigned by Linux

Vendor: Linux Product: Linux Package: linux Package: linux Package: linux-allwinner-5.19 Package: linux-aws Package: linux-aws-5.0 Package: linux-aws-5.11 Package: linux-aws-5.13 Package: linux-aws-5.19 Package: linux-aws-5.3 Package: linux-aws-5.4 Package: linux-aws-5.8 Package: linux-aws-6.2 Package: linux-aws-fips Package: linux-aws-hwe Package: linux-azure Package: linux-azure-4.15 Package: linux-azure-5.11 Package: linux-azure-5.13 Package: linux-azure-5.19 Package: linux-azure-5.3 Package: linux-azure-5.4 Package: linux-azure-5.8 Package: linux-azure-6.2 Package: linux-azure-edge Package: linux-azure-fde Package: linux-azure-fde-5.19 Package: linux-azure-fde-6.2 Package: linux-azure-fips Package: linux-bluefield Package: linux-fips Package: linux-gcp Package: linux-gcp-4.15 Package: linux-gcp-5.11 Package: linux-gcp-5.13 Package: linux-gcp-5.19 Package: linux-gcp-5.3 Package: linux-gcp-5.4 Package: linux-gcp-5.8 Package: linux-gcp-6.2 Package: linux-gcp-fips Package: linux-gke Package: linux-gke-4.15 Package: linux-gke-5.15 Package: linux-gke-5.4 Package: linux-gkeop Package: linux-gkeop-5.4 Package: linux-hwe Package: linux-hwe-5.11 Package: linux-hwe-5.13 Package: linux-hwe-5.19 Package: linux-hwe-5.4 Package: linux-hwe-5.8 Package: linux-hwe-6.2 Package: linux-hwe-edge Package: linux-intel-5.13 Package: linux-intel-iot-realtime Package: linux-kvm Package: linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.19 Package: linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.2 Package: linux-lts-xenial Package: linux-nvidia-6.2 Package: linux-oem Package: linux-oem-5.10 Package: linux-oem-5.13 Package: linux-oem-5.14 Package: linux-oem-5.17 Package: linux-oem-5.6 Package: linux-oem-6.0 Package: linux-oem-6.1 Package: linux-oracle Package: linux-oracle-5.0 Package: linux-oracle-5.11 Package: linux-oracle-5.13 Package: linux-oracle-5.3 Package: linux-oracle-5.4 Package: linux-oracle-5.8 Package: linux-raspi Package: linux-raspi-5.4 Package: linux-raspi-realtime Package: linux-raspi2 Package: linux-realtime Package: linux-riscv Package: linux-riscv-5.11 Package: linux-riscv-5.19 Package: linux-riscv-5.8 Package: linux-starfive-5.19 Package: linux-starfive-6.2 Package: linux-vmware Platform: Linux Ecosystem: Debian Ecosystem: Ubuntu

Description

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

kvm: avoid speculation-based attacks from out-of-range memslot accesses

KVM's mechanism for accessing guest memory translates a guest physical
address (gpa) to a host virtual address using the right-shifted gpa
(also known as gfn) and a struct kvm_memory_slot. The translation is
performed in __gfn_to_hva_memslot using the following formula:

hva = slot->userspace_addr + (gfn - slot->base_gfn) * PAGE_SIZE

It is expected that gfn falls within the boundaries of the guest's
physical memory. However, a guest can access invalid physical addresses
in such a way that the gfn is invalid.

__gfn_to_hva_memslot is called from kvm_vcpu_gfn_to_hva_prot, which first
retrieves a memslot through __gfn_to_memslot. While __gfn_to_memslot
does check that the gfn falls within the boundaries of the guest's
physical memory or not, a CPU can speculate the result of the check and
continue execution speculatively using an illegal gfn. The speculation
can result in calculating an out-of-bounds hva. If the resulting host
virtual address is used to load another guest physical address, this
is effectively a Spectre gadget consisting of two consecutive reads,
the second of which is data dependent on the first.

Right now it's not clear if there are any cases in which this is
exploitable. One interesting case was reported by the original author
of this patch, and involves visiting guest page tables on x86. Right
now these are not vulnerable because the hva read goes through get_user(),
which contains an LFENCE speculation barrier. However, there are
patches in progress for x86 uaccess.h to mask kernel addresses instead of
using LFENCE; once these land, a guest could use speculation to read
from the VMM's ring 3 address space. Other architectures such as ARM
already use the address masking method, and would be susceptible to
this same kind of data-dependent access gadgets. Therefore, this patch
proactively protects from these attacks by masking out-of-bounds gfns
in __gfn_to_hva_memslot, which blocks speculation of invalid hvas.

Sean Christopherson noted that this patch does not cover
kvm_read_guest_offset_cached. This however is limited to a few bytes
past the end of the cache, and therefore it is unlikely to be useful in
the context of building a chain of data dependent accesses.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
Linux Linux 2.6.25 4.4.273

Fixed in Linux distributions

Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Debian 14 linux 5.10.46-1 —
Debian 13 linux 5.10.46-1 —
Debian 12 linux 5.10.46-1 —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS linux-raspi-realtime No fix yet —
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS linux-riscv +22 No fix yet —
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS linux 5.4.0-81.91 —
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS linux-aws 5.4.0-1055.58 —
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS linux-azure 5.4.0-1056.58 —
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS linux-bluefield 5.4.0-1019.22 —
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS linux-gcp 5.4.0-1051.55 —
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS linux-gke +26 No fix yet —
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS linux-gkeop 5.4.0-1022.23 —
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS linux-kvm 5.4.0-1045.47 —
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS linux-oracle 5.4.0-1053.57 —
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS linux-raspi 5.4.0-1042.46 —
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS linux 4.15.0-156.163 —
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS linux-aws 4.15.0-1111.118 —
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS linux-aws-5.4 5.4.0-1055.58~18.04.1 —
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS linux-azure-4.15 4.15.0-1123.136 —
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS linux-azure-5.4 5.4.0-1056.58~18.04.1 —
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS linux-gcp +14 No fix yet —
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS linux-gcp-4.15 4.15.0-1108.122 —
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS linux-gcp-5.4 5.4.0-1051.55~18.04.1 —
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS linux-hwe-5.4 5.4.0-81.91~18.04.1 —
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS linux-kvm 4.15.0-1099.101 —
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS linux-oracle 4.15.0-1080.88 —
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS linux-oracle-5.4 5.4.0-1053.57~18.04.1 —
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS linux-raspi-5.4 5.4.0-1042.46~18.04.3 —
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS linux-hwe-edge No fix yet —
Show 8 more (older releases, extended support, other products)
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu Pro FIPS 20.04 LTS linux-fips +3 No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro FIPS 18.04 LTS linux-fips +3 No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro FIPS 16.04 LTS linux-fips No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro FIPS-updates 20.04 LTS linux-aws-fips 5.4.0-1069.73+fips2 —
Ubuntu Pro FIPS-updates 20.04 LTS linux-azure-fips 5.4.0-1073.76+fips1 —
Ubuntu Pro FIPS-updates 20.04 LTS linux-fips 5.4.0-1032.37 —
Ubuntu Pro FIPS-updates 20.04 LTS linux-gcp-fips 5.4.0-1067.71~20.04.1 —
Ubuntu Pro FIPS-updates 18.04 LTS linux-aws-fips 4.15.0-2053.55 —
Ubuntu Pro FIPS-updates 18.04 LTS linux-azure-fips 4.15.0-2035.39 —
Ubuntu Pro FIPS-updates 18.04 LTS linux-fips 4.15.0-1069.78 —
Ubuntu Pro FIPS-updates 18.04 LTS linux-gcp-fips 4.15.0-2018.20 —
Ubuntu Pro FIPS-updates 16.04 LTS linux-fips No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS linux +2 No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS linux-aws-hwe 4.15.0-1111.118~16.04.1 —
Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS linux-azure 4.15.0-1123.136~16.04.1 —
Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS linux-gcp 4.15.0-1108.122~16.04.1 —
Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS linux-hwe 4.15.0-156.163~16.04.1 —
Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS linux-oracle 4.15.0-1080.88~16.04.1 —
Ubuntu Pro 14.04 LTS linux +2 No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 14.04 LTS linux-azure 4.15.0-1123.136~14.04.1 —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
SLES 12 SP5 kernel-azure +2 4.12.14-16.188.1 SUSE-SU-2024:1979-1
SLES 12 SP5 kernel-docs +4 4.12.14-122.219.1 SUSE-SU-2024:2184-1
Show 3 more (older releases, extended support, other products)
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
SLES for SAP 12 SP5 kernel-azure +2 4.12.14-16.188.1 SUSE-SU-2024:1979-1
SLES for SAP 12 SP5 kernel-syms +2 4.12.14-122.219.1 SUSE-SU-2024:2184-1
SLE Real Time 12 SP5 kernel-rt +3 4.12.14-10.188.1 SUSE-SU-2024:1983-1
SLE Live Patching 12 SP5 kernel-default 4.12.14-122.219.1 SUSE-SU-2024:2184-1
SLE Live Patching 12 SP5 kgraft-patch-SLE12-SP5_Update_57 1-8.3.1 SUSE-SU-2024:2184-1

Amazon Linux

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Amazon Linux 2 kernel-livepatch-4.14.238-182.421 1.0-0.amzn2 ALAS2-2021-1685
Amazon Linux 2 perf +8 4.14.238-182.421.amzn2 ALAS2-2021-1685

Advisories 4

References