Re: [PATCH v14 15/22] KVM: x86: Don't emulate instructions guarded by CET

From: Chao Gao
Date: Tue Sep 16 2025 - 10:48:22 EST


>On second thought, I think it's worth doing the CPL checks. Explaining why KVM
>doesn't bother with checking privilege level is more work than just writing the
>code.
>
> /*
> * Reject emulation if KVM might need to emulate shadow stack updates
> * and/or indirect branch tracking enforcement, which the emulator
> * doesn't support.
> */
> if (opcode.flags & (ShadowStack | IndirBrnTrk) &&
> ctxt->ops->get_cr(ctxt, 4) & X86_CR4_CET) {
> u64 u_cet = 0, s_cet = 0;
>
> /*
> * Check both User and Supervisor on far transfers as inter-
> * privilege level transfers are impacted by CET at the target
> * privilege levels, and that is not known at this time. The
> * the expectation is that the guest will not require emulation
> * of any CET-affected instructions at any privilege level.
> */
> if (!(opcode.flags & NearBranch)) {
> u_cet = s_cet = CET_SHSTK_EN | CET_ENDBR_EN;
> } else if (ctxt->ops->cpl(ctxt) == 3) {
> u_cet = CET_SHSTK_EN | CET_ENDBR_EN;
> } else {
> s_cet = CET_SHSTK_EN | CET_ENDBR_EN;
> }
>
> if ((u_cet && ctxt->ops->get_msr(ctxt, MSR_IA32_U_CET, &u_cet)) ||
> (s_cet && ctxt->ops->get_msr(ctxt, MSR_IA32_S_CET, &s_cet)))
> return EMULATION_FAILED;
>
> if ((u_cet | s_cet) & CET_SHSTK_EN && opcode.flags & ShadowStack)
> return EMULATION_FAILED;
>
> if ((u_cet | s_cet) & CET_ENDBR_EN && opcode.flags & IndirBrnTrk)
> return EMULATION_FAILED;
> }
>
>Side topic, has anyone actually tested that this works? I.e. that attempts to
>emulate CET-affected instructions result in emulation failure?

I haven't. :(

>I'd love to have
>a selftest for this (hint, hint), but presumably writing one is non-trivial due
>to the need to get the selftest compiled with the necessary annotations, setup,
>and whatnot.

Sure. I'll try to write a selftest for this, but I'm unsure about its
complexity. Can you clarify what you mean by "necessary annotations,
setup..."? It seems to me that some simple assembly code, like
test_em_rdmsr(), should work.

For now, I plan to do a quick test by tweaking KUT's cet.c to force
emulation of CET-affected instructions.