]> git.ipfire.org Git - thirdparty/kernel/stable.git/commit
x86/vmscape: Add conditional IBPB mitigation
authorPawan Gupta <pawan.kumar.gupta@linux.intel.com>
Thu, 14 Aug 2025 17:20:42 +0000 (10:20 -0700)
committerGreg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Thu, 11 Sep 2025 15:19:15 +0000 (17:19 +0200)
commit15006289e5c38b2a830e1fba221977a27598176c
treedc0b8df90135f9b5b257664df1dee90fb92c5dcf
parent304d1fb275af2ec049e5381c92679d607d8dcc5e
x86/vmscape: Add conditional IBPB mitigation

Commit 2f8f173413f1cbf52660d04df92d0069c4306d25 upstream.

VMSCAPE is a vulnerability that exploits insufficient branch predictor
isolation between a guest and a userspace hypervisor (like QEMU). Existing
mitigations already protect kernel/KVM from a malicious guest. Userspace
can additionally be protected by flushing the branch predictors after a
VMexit.

Since it is the userspace that consumes the poisoned branch predictors,
conditionally issue an IBPB after a VMexit and before returning to
userspace. Workloads that frequently switch between hypervisor and
userspace will incur the most overhead from the new IBPB.

This new IBPB is not integrated with the existing IBPB sites. For
instance, a task can use the existing speculation control prctl() to
get an IBPB at context switch time. With this implementation, the
IBPB is doubled up: one at context switch and another before running
userspace.

The intent is to integrate and optimize these cases post-embargo.

[ dhansen: elaborate on suboptimal IBPB solution ]

Suggested-by: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Pawan Gupta <pawan.kumar.gupta@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>
Reviewed-by: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>
Reviewed-by: Borislav Petkov (AMD) <bp@alien8.de>
Acked-by: Sean Christopherson <seanjc@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov (AMD) <bp@alien8.de>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
arch/x86/include/asm/cpufeatures.h
arch/x86/include/asm/entry-common.h
arch/x86/include/asm/nospec-branch.h
arch/x86/kernel/cpu/bugs.c
arch/x86/kvm/x86.c