linux-kernel - Re: [FYI PATCH 0/7] Mitigation for CVE-2018-12207

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Message-ID: <dffb19ab-daa2-a513-531e-c43279d8a4bf@intel.com>
Date:   Wed, 13 Nov 2019 13:24:42 -0800
From:   Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...el.com>
To:     Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@...hat.com>,
        Jan Kiszka <jan.kiszka@...mens.com>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, kvm@...r.kernel.org
Cc:     Ralf Ramsauer <ralf.ramsauer@...-regensburg.de>,
        "Gupta, Pawan Kumar" <pawan.kumar.gupta@...el.com>
Subject: Re: [FYI PATCH 0/7] Mitigation for CVE-2018-12207

On 11/13/19 12:23 AM, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> On 13/11/19 07:38, Jan Kiszka wrote:
>> When reading MCE, error code 0150h, ie. SRAR, I was wondering if that
>> couldn't simply be handled by the host. But I suppose the symptom of
>> that erratum is not "just" regular recoverable MCE, rather
>> sometimes/always an unrecoverable CPU state, despite the error code, right?
> The erratum documentation talks explicitly about hanging the system, but
> it's not clear if it's just a result of the OS mishandling the MCE, or
> something worse.  So I don't know. :(  Pawan, do you?

It's "something worse".

I built a kernel module reproducer for this a long time ago.  The
symptom I observed was the whole system hanging hard, requiring me to go
hit the power button.  The MCE software machinery was not involved at
all from what I could tell.

About creating a unit test, I'd be personally happy to share my
reproducer, but I built it before this issue was root-caused.  There are
actually quite a few underlying variants and a good unit test would make
sure to exercise all of them.  My reproducer probably only exercised a
single case.