vulnerability

Ubuntu: (Multiple Advisories) (CVE-2025-21632): Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Severity
7
CVSS
(AV:L/AC:L/Au:S/C:C/I:C/A:C)
Published
2025-01-19
Added
2025-03-28
Modified
2025-04-02

Description

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

x86/fpu: Ensure shadow stack is active before "getting" registers

The x86 shadow stack support has its own set of registers. Those registers
are XSAVE-managed, but they are "supervisor state components" which means
that userspace can not touch them with XSAVE/XRSTOR. It also means that
they are not accessible from the existing ptrace ABI for XSAVE state.
Thus, there is a new ptrace get/set interface for it.

The regset code that ptrace uses provides an ->active() handler in
addition to the get/set ones. For shadow stack this ->active() handler
verifies that shadow stack is enabled via the ARCH_SHSTK_SHSTK bit in the
thread struct. The ->active() handler is checked from some call sites of
the regset get/set handlers, but not the ptrace ones. This was not
understood when shadow stack support was put in place.

As a result, both the set/get handlers can be called with
XFEATURE_CET_USER in its init state, which would cause get_xsave_addr() to
return NULL and trigger a WARN_ON(). The ssp_set() handler luckily has an
ssp_active() check to avoid surprising the kernel with shadow stack
behavior when the kernel is not ready for it (ARCH_SHSTK_SHSTK==0). That
check just happened to avoid the warning.

But the ->get() side wasn't so lucky. It can be called with shadow stacks
disabled, triggering the warning in practice, as reported by Christina
Schimpe:

WARNING: CPU: 5 PID: 1773 at arch/x86/kernel/fpu/regset.c:198 ssp_get+0x89/0xa0
[...]
Call Trace:

? show_regs+0x6e/0x80
? ssp_get+0x89/0xa0
? __warn+0x91/0x150
? ssp_get+0x89/0xa0
? report_bug+0x19d/0x1b0
? handle_bug+0x46/0x80
? exc_invalid_op+0x1d/0x80
? asm_exc_invalid_op+0x1f/0x30
? __pfx_ssp_get+0x10/0x10
? ssp_get+0x89/0xa0
? ssp_get+0x52/0xa0
__regset_get+0xad/0xf0
copy_regset_to_user+0x52/0xc0
ptrace_regset+0x119/0x140
ptrace_request+0x13c/0x850
? wait_task_inactive+0x142/0x1d0
? do_syscall_64+0x6d/0x90
arch_ptrace+0x102/0x300
[...]

Ensure that shadow stacks are active in a thread before looking them up
in the XSAVE buffer. Since ARCH_SHSTK_SHSTK and user_ssp[SHSTK_EN] are
set at the same time, the active check ensures that there will be
something to find in the XSAVE buffer.

[ dhansen: changelog/subject tweaks ]

Solution(s)

ubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-6-11-0-1007-realtimeubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-6-11-0-1010-raspiubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-6-11-0-1011-awsubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-6-11-0-1011-gcpubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-6-11-0-1011-gcp-64kubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-6-11-0-1011-lowlatencyubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-6-11-0-1011-lowlatency-64kubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-6-11-0-1012-azureubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-6-11-0-1012-azure-fdeubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-6-11-0-1013-oracleubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-6-11-0-1013-oracle-64kubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-6-11-0-1017-oemubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-6-11-0-21-genericubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-6-11-0-21-generic-64kubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-awsubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-azureubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-azure-fdeubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-gcpubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-gcp-64kubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-genericubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-generic-64kubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-generic-64k-hwe-24-04ubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-generic-hwe-24-04ubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-lowlatencyubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-lowlatency-64kubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-lowlatency-64k-hwe-24-04ubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-lowlatency-hwe-24-04ubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-oem-24-04ubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-oem-24-04aubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-oem-24-04bubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-oracleubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-oracle-64kubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-raspiubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-realtimeubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-realtime-hwe-24-04ubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-virtualubuntu-upgrade-linux-image-virtual-hwe-24-04
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