vulnerability

Amazon Linux AMI 2: CVE-2025-21991: Security patch for kernel, kernel-livepatch-5.10.234-225.910, kernel-livepatch-5.10.234-225.917, kernel-livepatch-5.10.234-225.921 (Multiple Advisories)

Severity
7
CVSS
(AV:L/AC:L/Au:S/C:C/I:C/A:C)
Published
Apr 2, 2025
Added
Apr 30, 2025
Modified
Jun 24, 2025

Description

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. ]

Solution(s)

amazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-bpftoolamazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-bpftool-debuginfoamazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-kernelamazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-kernel-debuginfoamazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-kernel-debuginfo-common-aarch64amazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-kernel-debuginfo-common-x86_64amazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-kernel-develamazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-kernel-headersamazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-kernel-livepatch-4-14-355-276-639amazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-kernel-livepatch-5-10-234-225-910amazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-kernel-livepatch-5-10-234-225-917amazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-kernel-livepatch-5-10-234-225-921amazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-kernel-livepatch-5-10-236-227-928amazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-kernel-toolsamazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-kernel-tools-debuginfoamazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-kernel-tools-develamazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-perfamazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-perf-debuginfoamazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-python-perfamazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-python-perf-debuginfo
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