[kernel-xen] Xen Security Advisory 62 (CVE-2013-1442) - Information leak on AVX and/or LWP capable CPUs

Steven Haigh netwiz at crc.id.au
Wed Sep 25 18:53:00 EST 2013


Hi all,

This has just been released by the Xen Security Team.

As yet, I am not releasing a fix to this as a seperate release as there
is another 2 XSA's that are currently under embargo due to be released
on 2013-09-30.

I am currently testing packages with XSA62, XSA63 and XSA66 patched and
will released them when the embargo ends.

For the moment, using the steps in MITIGATION will stop this from being
exploited.



            Xen Security Advisory CVE-2013-1442 / XSA-62
                              version 2

            Information leak on AVX and/or LWP capable CPUs

UPDATES IN VERSION 2
====================

Public release.

ISSUE DESCRIPTION
=================

When a guest increases the set of extended state components for a vCPU
saved/
restored via XSAVE/XRSTOR (to date this can only be the upper halves of YMM
registers, or AMD's LWP state) after already having touched other extended
registers restored via XRSTOR (e.g. floating point or XMM ones) during its
current scheduled CPU quantum, the hypervisor would make those registers
accessible without discarding the values an earlier scheduled vCPU may have
left in them.

IMPACT
======

A malicious domain may be able to leverage this to obtain sensitive
information
such as cryptographic keys from another domain.

VULNERABLE SYSTEMS
==================

Xen 4.0 and onwards are vulnerable when run on systems with processors
supporting AVX and/or LWP.  Any kind of guest can exploit the vulnerability.

In Xen 4.0.2 through 4.0.4 as well as in Xen 4.1.x XSAVE support is
disabled by
default; therefore systems running these versions are not vulnerable unless
support is explicitly enabled using the "xsave" hypervisor command line
option.

Systems using processors supporting neither AVX nor LWP are not vulnerable.

Xen 3.x and earlier are not vulnerable.

MITIGATION
==========

Turning off XSAVE support via the "no-xsave" hypervisor command line option
will avoid the vulnerability.

CREDITS
=======

Jan Beulich discovered this issue.

RESOLUTION
==========

Applying the attached patch resolves this issue.

xsa62.patch                 Xen 4.2.x, 4.3.x, and unstable
xsa62-4.1.patch             Xen 4.1.x

$ sha256sum xsa62*.patch
3cec8ec26552f2142c044422f1bc0f77892e681d789d1f360ecc06e1d714b6bb
xsa62-4.1.patch
364577f317a714099c068eb1ab771643ada99b5067fdd1eb5149fa5db649b856
xsa62.patch
$
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