Re: [PATCH v6 5/7] KVM: x86: VMX: Prevent MSR passthrough when MSR access is denied

[Alexander Graf]

On 04.09.20 04:18, Aaron Lewis wrote:
> > +/*
> > + * List of MSRs that can be directly passed to the guest.
> > + * In addition to these x2apic and PT MSRs are handled specially.
> > + */
> > +static u32 vmx_possible_passthrough_msrs[MAX_POSSIBLE_PASSGHROUGH_MSRS] = {
>
> MAX_POSSIBLE_PASSGHROUGH_MSRS should be MAX_POSSIBLE_PASSTHROUGH_MSRS

Ouch. Thanks :).

> > +       MSR_IA32_SPEC_CTRL,
> > +       MSR_IA32_PRED_CMD,
> > +       MSR_IA32_TSC,
> > +       MSR_FS_BASE,
> > +       MSR_GS_BASE,
> > +       MSR_KERNEL_GS_BASE,
> > +       MSR_IA32_SYSENTER_CS,
> > +       MSR_IA32_SYSENTER_ESP,
> > +       MSR_IA32_SYSENTER_EIP,
> > +       MSR_CORE_C1_RES,
> > +       MSR_CORE_C3_RESIDENCY,
> > +       MSR_CORE_C6_RESIDENCY,
> > +       MSR_CORE_C7_RESIDENCY,
> > +};
>
> Is there any reason not to construct this list on the fly?  That could
> help prevent the list from becoming stale over time if this is missed
> when calls to vmx_disable_intercept_for_msr() are added.

The problem is that we have an upper bound of elements that we can store 
in the bitmap. We can either make that number arbitrary and then have 
really awkward failure modes or be incredibly picky instead.

I went for incredibly picky. If anything goes out of sync, like when 
someone adds an MSR to the list without changing 
MAX_POSSIBLE_PASSTHROUGH_MSRS, a call to 
vmx_{en,dis}able_intercept_for_msr() is done on an MSR that is not part 
of the list, we will abort early and in the former case already through 
the compiler.

If you can think of a good way to construct the list dynamically and 
still have a working bitmap of "desired" passthrough states, I'm all 
ears :).

> > +
> >   /*
> >    * These 2 parameters are used to config the controls for Pause-Loop Exiting:
> >    * ple_gap:    upper bound on the amount of time between two successive
> > @@ -622,6 +642,41 @@ static inline bool report_flexpriority(void)
> >          return flexpriority_enabled;
> >   }
>
> One thing that seems to be missing is removing MSRs from the
> permission bitmap or resetting the permission bitmap to its original
> state before adding changes on top of it.  This would be needed on
> subsequent calls to kvm_vm_ioctl_set_msr_filter().  When that happens
> the original changes made by KVM_REQ_MSR_FILTER_CHANGED need to be
> backed out before applying the new set.

I'm not sure I follow. Subsequent calls to set_msr_filter() will invoke 
the "please reset the whole MSR passthrough bitmap to a consistent 
state" which will then reapply the in-kvm desired state through the 
bitmap and filter state on top on each of those.


Alex




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