CVE-2026-53360: KVM: SEV: Require in-GHCB scratch area if GHCB v2+ is in use

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

KVM: SEV: Require in-GHCB scratch area if GHCB v2+ is in use

As per the GHCB spec, when using GHCB v2+ require the software scratch area to reside in the GHCB's shared buffer. Note, things like Page State Change (PSC) requests rely on this behavior, as the guest can't provide a length when making the request, i.e. the size of the guest payload is bounded by the size of the shared buffer.

Failure to force usage of the GHCB, and a slew of other flaws, lets a malicious SNP guest corrupt host kernel heap memory, and leak host heap layout information.

setupvmgexitscratch() allocates a buffer via kvzalloc(exitinfo2), where exitinfo2 is guest-controlled. With exitinfo2=24, this yields a 24-byte allocation in kmalloc-cg-32 (32-byte slab objects). The buffer holds an 8-byte pschdr followed by 8-byte pscentry structs, so only entries[0] and entries[1] are in-bounds.

snpbeginpsc() validates endentry against VMGEXITPSCMAXCOUNT (253) but NOT against the actual buffer size:

idxend = hdr->endentry;

if (idxend >= VMGEXITPSCMAXCOUNT) { // checks 253, not buffer snpcompletepsc(svm, ...); return 1; }

for (idx = idxstart; idx <= idxend; idx++) { entrystart = entries[idx]; // OOB when idx >= 2

The guest sets endentry=10+, causing the host to iterate entries[2+] which are OOB into adjacent slab objects. For each OOB entry:

- The host reads 8 bytes (OOB READ / info leak oracle) - If the data passes PSC validation, snpcompleteonepsc() writes curpage = 1 or 512 into the entry (OOB WRITE, sev.c:3806) - If validation fails, the error response reveals whether adjacent memory is zero vs non-zero (information disclosure to guest)

The guest controls allocation size (exitinfo2), entry range (curentry/endentry), and can fire unlimited VMGEXITs to repeatedly hit different slab positions.

By exploiting the variety of bugs, a malicious SEV-SNP guest can: - OOB read adjacent kmalloc-cg-32 objects (heap layout disclosure) - OOB write curpage bits into adjacent objects (heap corruption) - Trigger use-after-free conditions across VMGEXITs

E.g. with KASAN enabled, a single insmod of the PoC guest module produces 73 KASAN reports:

BUG: KASAN: slab-out-of-bounds in snpbeginpsc+0x126/0x890 Read of size 8 at addr ffff888219ffb5e0 by task qemu-system-x86/2199

BUG: KASAN: slab-out-of-bounds in snpbeginpsc+0x468/0x890 Write of size 8 at addr ffff888351566648 by task qemu-system-x86/2199

The buggy address belongs to the object at ffff888XXXXXXXXX which belongs to the cache kmalloc-cg-32 of size 32 The buggy address is located N bytes to the right of allocated 32-byte region [ffff888XXXXXXXXX, ffff888XXXXXXXXX)

Breakdown: 62 slab-out-of-bounds (reads + writes past allocation) 7 slab-use-after-free 4 use-after-free

All credit to Stan for the wonderful description and reproducer!

[sean: write changelog]