Re: [PATCH v6 6/6] KVM: VMX: Move VERW closer to VMentry for MDS mitigation

[Sean Christopherson]

On Tue, Jan 23, 2024, Pawan Gupta wrote:
> During VMentry VERW is executed to mitigate MDS. After VERW, any memory
> access like register push onto stack may put host data in MDS affected
> CPU buffers. A guest can then use MDS to sample host data.
> 
> Although likelihood of secrets surviving in registers at current VERW
> callsite is less, but it can't be ruled out. Harden the MDS mitigation
> by moving the VERW mitigation late in VMentry path.
> 
> Note that VERW for MMIO Stale Data mitigation is unchanged because of
> the complexity of per-guest conditional VERW which is not easy to handle
> that late in asm with no GPRs available. If the CPU is also affected by
> MDS, VERW is unconditionally executed late in asm regardless of guest
> having MMIO access.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Pawan Gupta <pawan.kumar.gupta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> ---

Acked-by: Sean Christopherson <seanjc@xxxxxxxxxx>