linux-cve-announce - CVE-2025-37957: KVM: SVM: Forcibly leave SMM mode on SHUTDOWN interception

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Message-ID: <2025052003-CVE-2025-37957-e23c@gregkh>
Date: Tue, 20 May 2025 18:02:11 +0200
From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
To: linux-cve-announce@...r.kernel.org
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...nel.org>
Subject: CVE-2025-37957: KVM: SVM: Forcibly leave SMM mode on SHUTDOWN interception

From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...nel.org>

Description
===========

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

KVM: SVM: Forcibly leave SMM mode on SHUTDOWN interception

Previously, commit ed129ec9057f ("KVM: x86: forcibly leave nested mode
on vCPU reset") addressed an issue where a triple fault occurring in
nested mode could lead to use-after-free scenarios. However, the commit
did not handle the analogous situation for System Management Mode (SMM).

This omission results in triggering a WARN when KVM forces a vCPU INIT
after SHUTDOWN interception while the vCPU is in SMM. This situation was
reprodused using Syzkaller by:

  1) Creating a KVM VM and vCPU
  2) Sending a KVM_SMI ioctl to explicitly enter SMM
  3) Executing invalid instructions causing consecutive exceptions and
     eventually a triple fault

The issue manifests as follows:

  WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 25506 at arch/x86/kvm/x86.c:12112
  kvm_vcpu_reset+0x1d2/0x1530 arch/x86/kvm/x86.c:12112
  Modules linked in:
  CPU: 0 PID: 25506 Comm: syz-executor.0 Not tainted
  6.1.130-syzkaller-00157-g164fe5dde9b6 #0
  Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996),
  BIOS 1.12.0-1 04/01/2014
  RIP: 0010:kvm_vcpu_reset+0x1d2/0x1530 arch/x86/kvm/x86.c:12112
  Call Trace:
   <TASK>
   shutdown_interception+0x66/0xb0 arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.c:2136
   svm_invoke_exit_handler+0x110/0x530 arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.c:3395
   svm_handle_exit+0x424/0x920 arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.c:3457
   vcpu_enter_guest arch/x86/kvm/x86.c:10959 [inline]
   vcpu_run+0x2c43/0x5a90 arch/x86/kvm/x86.c:11062
   kvm_arch_vcpu_ioctl_run+0x50f/0x1cf0 arch/x86/kvm/x86.c:11283
   kvm_vcpu_ioctl+0x570/0xf00 arch/x86/kvm/../../../virt/kvm/kvm_main.c:4122
   vfs_ioctl fs/ioctl.c:51 [inline]
   __do_sys_ioctl fs/ioctl.c:870 [inline]
   __se_sys_ioctl fs/ioctl.c:856 [inline]
   __x64_sys_ioctl+0x19a/0x210 fs/ioctl.c:856
   do_syscall_x64 arch/x86/entry/common.c:51 [inline]
   do_syscall_64+0x35/0x80 arch/x86/entry/common.c:81
   entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x6e/0xd8

Architecturally, INIT is blocked when the CPU is in SMM, hence KVM's WARN()
in kvm_vcpu_reset() to guard against KVM bugs, e.g. to detect improper
emulation of INIT.  SHUTDOWN on SVM is a weird edge case where KVM needs to
do _something_ sane with the VMCB, since it's technically undefined, and
INIT is the least awful choice given KVM's ABI.

So, double down on stuffing INIT on SHUTDOWN, and force the vCPU out of
SMM to avoid any weirdness (and the WARN).

Found by Linux Verification Center (linuxtesting.org) with Syzkaller.

[sean: massage changelog, make it clear this isn't architectural behavior]

The Linux kernel CVE team has assigned CVE-2025-37957 to this issue.


Affected and fixed versions
===========================

	Issue introduced in 6.1 with commit ed129ec9057f89d615ba0c81a4984a90345a1684 and fixed in 6.12.29 with commit d362b21fefcef7eda8f1cd78a5925735d2b3287c
	Issue introduced in 6.1 with commit ed129ec9057f89d615ba0c81a4984a90345a1684 and fixed in 6.14.7 with commit e9b28bc65fd3a56755ba503258024608292b4ab1
	Issue introduced in 6.1 with commit ed129ec9057f89d615ba0c81a4984a90345a1684 and fixed in 6.15-rc6 with commit a2620f8932fa9fdabc3d78ed6efb004ca409019f
	Issue introduced in 5.15.81 with commit 6425c590d0cc6914658a630a40b7f8226aa028c3
	Issue introduced in 6.0.11 with commit d40ef0a511676bd65ca9acb295430c07af59ab85

Please see https://www.kernel.org for a full list of currently supported
kernel versions by the kernel community.

Unaffected versions might change over time as fixes are backported to
older supported kernel versions.  The official CVE entry at
	https://cve.org/CVERecord/?id=CVE-2025-37957
will be updated if fixes are backported, please check that for the most
up to date information about this issue.


Affected files
==============

The file(s) affected by this issue are:
	arch/x86/kvm/smm.c
	arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.c


Mitigation
==========

The Linux kernel CVE team recommends that you update to the latest
stable kernel version for this, and many other bugfixes.  Individual
changes are never tested alone, but rather are part of a larger kernel
release.  Cherry-picking individual commits is not recommended or
supported by the Linux kernel community at all.  If however, updating to
the latest release is impossible, the individual changes to resolve this
issue can be found at these commits:
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/d362b21fefcef7eda8f1cd78a5925735d2b3287c
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e9b28bc65fd3a56755ba503258024608292b4ab1
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a2620f8932fa9fdabc3d78ed6efb004ca409019f