KVM: VMX: Always clear vmx-&gt;fail on emulation_required
CVE: CVE-2021-47092
Component: kernel
CWE: CWE-20
Severity: Moderate
CVSS v3: 5.6/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Release date: 2021-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

KVM: VMX: Always clear vmx->fail on emulation_required

Revert a relatively recent change that set vmx->fail if the vCPU is in L2
and emulation_required is true, as that behavior is completely bogus.
Setting vmx->fail and synthesizing a VM-Exit is contradictory and wrong:

  (a) it's impossible to have both a VM-Fail and VM-Exit
  (b) vmcs.EXIT_REASON is not modified on VM-Fail
  (c) emulation_required refers to guest state and guest state checks are
      always VM-Exits, not VM-Fails.

For KVM specifically, emulation_required is handled before nested exits
in __vmx_handle_exit(), thus setting vmx->fail has no immediate effect,
i.e. KVM calls into handle_invalid_guest_state() and vmx->fail is ignored.
Setting vmx->fail can ultimately result in a WARN in nested_vmx_vmexit()
firing when tearing down the VM as KVM never expects vmx->fail to be set
when L2 is active, KVM always reflects those errors into L1.

  ------------[ cut here ]------------
  WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 21158 at arch/x86/kvm/vmx/nested.c:4548
                                nested_vmx_vmexit+0x16bd/0x17e0
                                arch/x86/kvm/vmx/nested.c:4547
  Modules linked in:
  CPU: 0 PID: 21158 Comm: syz-executor.1 Not tainted 5.16.0-rc3-syzkaller #0
  Hardware name: Google Google Compute Engine/Google Compute Engine, BIOS Google 01/01/2011
  RIP: 0010:nested_vmx_vmexit+0x16bd/0x17e0 arch/x86/kvm/vmx/nested.c:4547
  Code: <0f> 0b e9 2e f8 ff ff e8 57 b3 5d 00 0f 0b e9 00 f1 ff ff 89 e9 80
  Call Trace:
   vmx_leave_nested arch/x86/kvm/vmx/nested.c:6220 [inline]
   nested_vmx_free_vcpu+0x83/0xc0 arch/x86/kvm/vmx/nested.c:330
   vmx_free_vcpu+0x11f/0x2a0 arch/x86/kvm/vmx/vmx.c:6799
   kvm_arch_vcpu_destroy+0x6b/0x240 arch/x86/kvm/x86.c:10989
   kvm_vcpu_destroy+0x29/0x90 arch/x86/kvm/../../../virt/kvm/kvm_main.c:441
   kvm_free_vcpus arch/x86/kvm/x86.c:11426 [inline]
   kvm_arch_destroy_vm+0x3ef/0x6b0 arch/x86/kvm/x86.c:11545
   kvm_destroy_vm arch/x86/kvm/../../../virt/kvm/kvm_main.c:1189 [inline]
   kvm_put_kvm+0x751/0xe40 arch/x86/kvm/../../../virt/kvm/kvm_main.c:1220
   kvm_vcpu_release+0x53/0x60 arch/x86/kvm/../../../virt/kvm/kvm_main.c:3489
   __fput+0x3fc/0x870 fs/file_table.c:280
   task_work_run+0x146/0x1c0 kernel/task_work.c:164
   exit_task_work include/linux/task_work.h:32 [inline]
   do_exit+0x705/0x24f0 kernel/exit.c:832
   do_group_exit+0x168/0x2d0 kernel/exit.c:929
   get_signal+0x1740/0x2120 kernel/signal.c:2852
   arch_do_signal_or_restart+0x9c/0x730 arch/x86/kernel/signal.c:868
   handle_signal_work kernel/entry/common.c:148 [inline]
   exit_to_user_mode_loop kernel/entry/common.c:172 [inline]
   exit_to_user_mode_prepare+0x191/0x220 kernel/entry/common.c:207
   __syscall_exit_to_user_mode_work kernel/entry/common.c:289 [inline]
   syscall_exit_to_user_mode+0x2e/0x70 kernel/entry/common.c:300
   do_syscall_64+0x53/0xd0 arch/x86/entry/common.c:86
   entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x44/0xae


Remediation: