Re: [Xen-users] Xen Security Advisory 60 (CVE-2013-2212) - Excessive time to disable caching with HVM guests with PCI passthrough

[Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 11:36:55AM +0000, Xen.org security team wrote:
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>              Xen Security Advisory CVE-2013-2212 / XSA-60
>                              version 4
> 
>    Excessive time to disable caching with HVM guests with PCI passthrough
> 
> UPDATES IN VERSION 4
> ====================
> 
> Public release.
> 
> ISSUE DESCRIPTION
> =================
> 
> HVM guests are able to manipulate their physical address space such that
> processing a subsequent request by that guest to disable caches takes an
> extended amount of time changing the cachability of the memory pages assigned
> to this guest. This applies only when the guest has been granted access to
> some memory mapped I/O region (typically by way of assigning a passthrough
> PCI device).
> 
> This can cause the CPU which processes the request to become unavailable,
> possibly causing the hypervisor or a guest kernel (including the domain 0 one)
> to halt itself ("panic").
> 
> For reference, as long as no patch implementing an approved alternative
> solution is available (there's only a draft violating certain requirements
> set by Intel's documentation), the problematic code is the function
> vmx_set_uc_mode() (in that it calls ept_change_entry_emt_with_range() with
> the full guest GFN range, which the guest has control over, but which also
> would be a problem with sufficiently large but not malicious guests).
> 
> IMPACT
> ======
> 
> A malicious domain, given access to a device with memory mapped I/O
> regions, can cause the host to become unresponsive for a period of
> time, potentially leading to a DoS affecting the whole system.
> 
> VULNERABLE SYSTEMS
> ==================
> 
> Xen version 3.3 onwards is vulnerable.
> 
> Only systems using the Intel variant of Hardware Assisted Paging (aka EPT) are
> vulnerable.
> 
> MITIGATION
> ==========
> 
> This issue can be avoided by not assigning PCI devices to untrusted guests, or
> by running HVM guests with shadow mode paging (through adding "hap=0" to the
> domain configuration file).
> 
> CREDITS
> =======
> 
> Konrad Wilk found the issue as a bug, which on examination by the

It was:
Zhenzhong Duan

> Xenproject.org Security Team turned out to be a security problem.
> 
> RESOLUTION
> ==========
> 
> There is currently no resolution to this issue.
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