CVE: CVE-2023-53024
Published: 2025-03-27
Description: In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

bpf: Fix pointer-leak due to insufficient speculative store bypass mitigation

To mitigate Spectre v4, 2039f26f3aca ("bpf: Fix leakage due to
insufficient speculative store bypass mitigation") inserts lfence
instructions after 1) initializing a stack slot and 2) spilling a
pointer to the stack.

However, this does not cover cases where a stack slot is first
initialized with a pointer (subject to sanitization) but then
overwritten with a scalar (not subject to sanitization because
the slot was already initialized). In this case, the second write
may be subject to speculative store bypass (SSB) creating a
speculative pointer-as-scalar type confusion. This allows the
program to subsequently leak the numerical pointer value using,
for example, a branch-based cache side channel.

To fix this, also sanitize scalars if they write a stack slot
that previously contained a pointer. Assuming that pointer-spills
are only generated by LLVM on register-pressure, the performance
impact on most real-world BPF programs should be small.

The following unprivileged BPF bytecode drafts a minimal exploit
and the mitigation:

  [...]
  // r6 = 0 or 1 (skalar, unknown user input)
  // r7 = accessible ptr for side channel
  // r10 = frame pointer (fp), to be leaked
  //
  r9 = r10 # fp alias to encourage ssb
  *(u64 *)(r9 - 8) = r10 // fp[-8] = ptr, to be leaked
  // lfence added here because of pointer spill to stack.
  //
  // Ommitted: Dummy bpf_ringbuf_output() here to train alias predictor
  // for no r9-r10 dependency.
  //
  *(u64 *)(r10 - 8) = r6 // fp[-8] = scalar, overwrites ptr
  // 2039f26f3aca: no lfence added because stack slot was not STACK_INVALID,
  // store may be subject to SSB
  //
  // fix: also add an lfence when the slot contained a ptr
  //
  r8 = *(u64 *)(r9 - 8)
  // r8 = architecturally a scalar, speculatively a ptr
  //
  // leak ptr using branch-based cache side channel:
  r8 &= 1 // choose bit to leak
  if r8 == 0 goto SLOW // no mispredict
  // architecturally dead code if input r6 is 0,
  // only executes speculatively iff ptr bit is 1
  r8 = *(u64 *)(r7 + 0) # encode bit in cache (0: slow, 1: fast)
SLOW:
  [...]

After running this, the program can time the access to *(r7 + 0) to
determine whether the chosen pointer bit was 0 or 1. Repeat this 64
times to recover the whole address on amd64.

In summary, sanitization can only be skipped if one scalar is
overwritten with another scalar. Scalar-confusion due to speculative
store bypass can not lead to invalid accesses because the pointer
bounds deducted during verification are enforced using branchless
logic. See 979d63d50c0c ("bpf: prevent out of bounds speculation on
pointer arithmetic") for details.

Do not make the mitigation depend on !env->allow_{uninit_stack,ptr_leaks}
because speculative leaks are likely unexpected if these were enabled.
For example, leaking the address to a protected log file may be acceptable
while disabling the mitigation might unintentionally leak the address
into the cached-state of a map that is accessible to unprivileged
processes.
CVSS Score: 7.1 (HIGH)
References: https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/01bdcc73dbe7be3ad4d4ee9a59b71e42f461a528; https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/81b3374944d201872cfcf82730a7860f8e7c31dd; https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/aae109414a57ab4164218f36e2e4a17f027fcaaa