vulnerability
Ubuntu: (CVE-2021-47226): linux-fips vulnerability
| Severity | CVSS | Published | Added | Modified |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 | (AV:L/AC:L/Au:S/C:N/I:C/A:C) | May 21, 2024 | Jun 26, 2025 | Aug 18, 2025 |
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
x86/fpu: Invalidate FPU state after a failed XRSTOR from a user buffer
Both Intel and AMD consider it to be architecturally valid for XRSTOR to
fail with #PF but nonetheless change the register state. The actual
conditions under which this might occur are unclear [1], but it seems
plausible that this might be triggered if one sibling thread unmaps a page
and invalidates the shared TLB while another sibling thread is executing
XRSTOR on the page in question.
__fpu__restore_sig() can execute XRSTOR while the hardware registers
are preserved on behalf of a different victim task (using the
fpu_fpregs_owner_ctx mechanism), and, in theory, XRSTOR could fail but
modify the registers.
If this happens, then there is a window in which __fpu__restore_sig()
could schedule out and the victim task could schedule back in without
reloading its own FPU registers. This would result in part of the FPU
state that __fpu__restore_sig() was attempting to load leaking into the
victim task's user-visible state.
Invalidate preserved FPU registers on XRSTOR failure to prevent this
situation from corrupting any state.
[1] Frequent readers of the errata lists might imagine "complex
microarchitectural conditions".
Solution
References
- CVE-2021-47226
- https://attackerkb.com/topics/CVE-2021-47226
- CWE-203
- URL-https://git.kernel.org/linus/d8778e393afa421f1f117471144f8ce6deb6953a
- URL-https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/002665dcba4bbec8c82f0aeb4bd3f44334ed2c14
- URL-https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a7748e021b9fb7739e3cb88449296539de0b6817
- URL-https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/d8778e393afa421f1f117471144f8ce6deb6953a
- URL-https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2021-47226
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