vulnerability

Red Hat: CVE-2023-53663: kernel: KVM: nSVM: Check instead of asserting on nested TSC scaling support (Multiple Advisories)

Severity
5
CVSS
(AV:L/AC:M/Au:M/C:N/I:P/A:C)
Published
Oct 7, 2025
Added
Nov 14, 2025
Modified
Nov 17, 2025

Description

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

KVM: nSVM: Check instead of asserting on nested TSC scaling support

Check for nested TSC scaling support on nested SVM VMRUN instead of
asserting that TSC scaling is exposed to L1 if L1's MSR_AMD64_TSC_RATIO
has diverged from KVM's default. Userspace can trigger the WARN at will
by writing the MSR and then updating guest CPUID to hide the feature
(modifying guest CPUID is allowed anytime before KVM_RUN). E.g. hacking
KVM's state_test selftest to do

vcpu_set_msr(vcpu, MSR_AMD64_TSC_RATIO, 0);
vcpu_clear_cpuid_feature(vcpu, X86_FEATURE_TSCRATEMSR);

after restoring state in a new VM+vCPU yields an endless supply of:

------------[ cut here ]------------
WARNING: CPU: 164 PID: 62565 at arch/x86/kvm/svm/nested.c:699
nested_vmcb02_prepare_control+0x3d6/0x3f0 [kvm_amd]
Call Trace:
<TASK>
enter_svm_guest_mode+0x114/0x560 [kvm_amd]
nested_svm_vmrun+0x260/0x330 [kvm_amd]
vmrun_interception+0x29/0x30 [kvm_amd]
svm_invoke_exit_handler+0x35/0x100 [kvm_amd]
svm_handle_exit+0xe7/0x180 [kvm_amd]
kvm_arch_vcpu_ioctl_run+0x1eab/0x2570 [kvm]
kvm_vcpu_ioctl+0x4c9/0x5b0 [kvm]
__se_sys_ioctl+0x7a/0xc0
__x64_sys_ioctl+0x21/0x30
do_syscall_64+0x41/0x90
entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x63/0xcd
RIP: 0033:0x45ca1b

Note, the nested #VMEXIT path has the same flaw, but needs a different
fix and will be handled separately.

Solutions

redhat-upgrade-kernelredhat-upgrade-kernel-rt
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