[Xen-devel] Xen Security Advisory 300 v1 - Linux: No grant table and foreign mapping limits

[Xen.org security team <security@xxxxxxx>]

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                    Xen Security Advisory XSA-300

             Linux: No grant table and foreign mapping limits

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

Virtual device backends and device models running in domain 0, or
other backend driver domains, need to be able to map guest memory
(either via grant mappings, or via the foreign mapping interface).
For Linux to keep track of these mappings, it needs to have a page
structure for each one.  In practice the number of page structures is
usually limited.  In PV dom0, a range of pfns are typically set aside
at boot ("pre-ballooned") for this purpose; for PVH and Arm dom0s, no
memory is set aside to begin with.  In either case, when more of this
"foreign / grant map pfn space" is needed, dom0 will balloon out extra
pages to use for this purpose.

Unfortunately, in Linux, there are no limits, either on the total
amount of memory which dom0 will attempt to balloon down to, nor on
the amount of "foreign / grant map" memory which any individual guest
can consume.

As a result, a malicious guest may be able, with crafted requests to
the backend, to cause dom0 to exhaust its own memory, leading to a
host crash; and if this is not possible, it may be able to monopolize
all of the foreign / grant map pfn space, starving out other guests.

IMPACT
======

Guest may be able to crash domain 0 (Host Denial-of-Service); or may
be able to starve out I/O requests from other guests (Guest
Denial-of-Service).

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

All versions of Linux are vulnerable.

All Arm dom0s are vulnerable; on x86, PVH dom0 is generally vulnerable,
while PV dom0's vulnerability depends on what, if any, "dom0_mem="
option was passed to Xen.

MITIGATION
==========

On PV dom0, the amount of "pre-ballooned" memory can be increased by
limiting dom0 memory via "dom0_mem=", but avoiding use of the
"dom0_mem=max:<value>" form of the command line option, or by making
the delta between "actual" and "maximum" sufficiently large.  This makes
the attack more difficult to accomplish.

CREDITS
=======

This issue was discovered by Julien Grall of ARM.

RESOLUTION
==========

Applying the appropriate attached patch resolves the domain 0 memory
exhaustion issue.

NOTE: This does NOT fix the guest starvation issue.  Fixing fixing
this issue is more complex, and it was determined that it was better
to work on a robust fix for the issue in public.  This advisory will
be updated when fixes are available.

xsa300-linux-5.1.patch     Linux 4.4 ... 5.2-rc

$ sha256sum xsa300*
9c8a9aec52b147f8e8ef41444e1dd11803bacf3bd4d0f6efa863b16f7a9621ac  
xsa300-linux-5.1.patch
$

NOTE ON LACK OF EMBARGO
=======================

The lack of predisclosure is due to a short schedule set by the
discoverer, and efforts to resolve the advisory wording.

DEPLOYMENT DURING EMBARGO
=========================

Deployment of the patches and/or mitigations described above (or
others which are substantially similar) is permitted during the
embargo, even on public-facing systems with untrusted guest users and
administrators.

But: Distribution of updated software is prohibited (except to other
members of the predisclosure list).

Predisclosure list members who wish to deploy significantly different
patches and/or mitigations, please contact the Xen Project Security
Team.


(Note: this during-embargo deployment notice is retained in
post-embargo publicly released Xen Project advisories, even though it
is then no longer applicable.  This is to enable the community to have
oversight of the Xen Project Security Team's decisionmaking.)

For more information about permissible uses of embargoed information,
consult the Xen Project community's agreed Security Policy:
  http://www.xenproject.org/security-policy.html
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Attachment: xsa300-linux-5.1.patch
Description: Binary data

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