Vulnerability · Published May 1, 2024 · Assigned by Linux

CVE-2024-26992KVM: x86/pmu: Disable support for adaptive PEBS

High 7.3

In plain English

A high-severity security flaw in Linux from Linux. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.2% (higher than 14% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.

Severity (CVSS 3.1)7.3High
Exploit odds (30 days)0.2%top 85.9% of all CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo reportsCISA SSVC: none
Attack toolingNoneno public tooling known

Official description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: KVM: x86/pmu: Disable support for adaptive PEBS Drop support for virtualizing adaptive PEBS, as KVM's implementation is architecturally broken without an obvious/easy path forward, and because exposing adaptive PEBS can leak host LBRs to the guest, i.e. can leak host kernel addresses to the guest. Bug #1 is that KVM doesn't account for the upper 32 bits of IA32_FIXED_CTR_CTRL when (re)programming fixed counters, e.g fixed_ctrl_field() drops the upper bits, reprogram_fixed_counters() stores local variables as u8s and truncates the upper bits too, etc. Bug #2 is that, because KVM _always_ sets precise_ip to a non-zero value for PEBS events, perf will _always_ generate an adaptive record, even if the guest requested a basic record. Note, KVM will also enable adaptive PEBS in individual *counter*, even if adaptive PEBS isn't exposed to the guest, but this is benign as MSR_PEBS_DATA_CFG is guaranteed to be zero, i.e. the guest will only ever see Basic records. Bug #3 is in perf. intel_pmu_disable_fixed() doesn't clear the upper bits either, i.e. leaves ICL_FIXED_0_ADAPTIVE set, and intel_pmu_enable_fixed() effectively doesn't clear ICL_FIXED_0_ADAPTIVE either. I.e. perf _always_ enables ADAPTIVE counters, regardless of what KVM requests. Bug #4 is that adaptive PEBS *might* effectively bypass event filters set by the host, as "Updated Memory Access Info Group" records information that might be disallowed by userspace via KVM_SET_PMU_EVENT_FILTER. Bug #5 is that KVM doesn't ensure LBR MSRs hold guest values (or at least zeros) when entering a vCPU with adaptive PEBS, which allows the guest to read host LBRs, i.e. host RIPs/addresses, by enabling "LBR Entries" records. Disable adaptive PEBS support as an immediate fix due to the severity of the LBR leak in particular, and because fixing all of the bugs will be non-trivial, e.g. not suitable for backporting to stable kernels. Note! This will break live migration, but trying to make KVM play nice with live migration would be quite complicated, wouldn't be guaranteed to work (i.e. KVM might still kill/confuse the guest), and it's not clear that there are any publicly available VMMs that support adaptive PEBS, let alone live migrate VMs that support adaptive PEBS, e.g. QEMU doesn't support PEBS in any capacity.

Affected packages & fixed versions

EcosystemPackageFixed inAdvisory
Debian:12linux6.1.90-1DEBIAN-CVE-2024-26992
Debian:12linux6.1.90-1DSA-5680-1
Debian:13linux6.8.9-1DEBIAN-CVE-2024-26992
Debian:14linux6.8.9-1DEBIAN-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux6.8.0-38.38UBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux6.8.0-38.38USN-6893-1
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-allwinner-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-aws6.8.0-1011.12UBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-aws6.8.0-1011.12USN-6893-3
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-aws-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-aws-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-aws-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-aws-6.86.8.0-1011.12~22.04.1UBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-azure6.8.0-1010.10USN-6893-1
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-azure6.8.0-1010.10UBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-azure-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-azure-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-azure-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-azure-6.86.8.0-1010.10~22.04.1UBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-azure-fde-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-azure-fde-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-gcp6.8.0-1010.11UBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-gcp6.8.0-1010.11USN-6893-1
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-gcp-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-gcp-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-gcp-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-gke6.8.0-1006.9USN-6893-2
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-gke6.8.0-1006.9UBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-hwe-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-hwe-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-hwe-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-ibm6.8.0-1008.8USN-6893-1
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-ibm6.8.0-1008.8UBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-intel6.8.0-1007.14UBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-intel6.8.0-1007.14USN-6893-1
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-intel-iot-realtimeno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-lowlatency6.8.0-38.38.1UBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-lowlatency6.8.0-38.38.1USN-6893-1
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-lowlatency-hwe-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-lowlatency-hwe-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-lowlatency-hwe-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-nvidia6.8.0-1009.9USN-6893-2
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-nvidia6.8.0-1009.9UBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-nvidia-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-nvidia-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-nvidia-6.86.8.0-1009.9~22.04.1UBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-oem-5.17no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-oem-6.0no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-oem-6.1no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-oem-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-oem-6.86.8.0-1008.8USN-6893-1
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-oem-6.86.8.0-1008.8UBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-oracle6.8.0-1008.8UBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-oracle6.8.0-1008.8USN-6918-1
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-oracle-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-oracle-6.86.8.0-1008.8~22.04.1UBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-raspi6.8.0-1007.7USN-6893-1
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-raspi6.8.0-1007.7UBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-realtimeno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-riscvno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-riscv6.8.0-38.38.1UBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-riscv-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-riscv-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-starfive-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-starfive-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-starfive-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2024-26992

Affected products (as reported)

VendorProductVersions
Linux Linux c59a1f106f5cd4843c097069ff1bb2ad72103a67 – before 0fb74c00d140a66128afc0003785dcc57e69d312c59a1f106f5cd4843c097069ff1bb2ad72103a67 – before 037e48ceccf163899374b601afb6ae8d0bf1d2acc59a1f106f5cd4843c097069ff1bb2ad72103a67 – before 7a7650b3ac23e5fc8c990f00e94f787dc84e3175c59a1f106f5cd4843c097069ff1bb2ad72103a67 – before 9e985cbf2942a1bb8fcef9adc2a17d90fd7ca8ee
Linux Linux 6.0

References