In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
KVM: SEV: Forcefully invalidate SNP VMSA if its backing gmem page is zapped
Wire up a gmem_invalidate_range() call for SNP VMs, and use it to force
vCPUs to reload/recheck their guest-provided VMSA if the backing gmem
page is being invalidated, e.g. is being PUNCH_HOLE'd. Use the same core
logic to handle invalidations as VMX does for the APIC-access page, as the
two concepts are nearly identical: shove the physical address of a page
into the vCPU's control structure:
1. Snapshot the invalidation sequence counter
2. Grab the pfn (from guest_memfd in this case)
3. Acquire mmu_lock for read
4. Re-request reload if retry is needed, otherwise commit the change.
Note, the re-request action in #4 is necessary as KVM's retry logic is
fuzzy, i.e. can get false positives. If the guest_memfd page has been
dropped, at some point a subsequent reload will fail to get a PFN from
guest_memfd, and KVM will fail KVM_RUN. If the retry was due to a false
positive, KVM will retry until there are no relevant MMU notifier events
(and will retry in the "outer" loop, i.e. will drop locks and resched as
needed).
Note #2! Take care to invalidate the VMSA when a relevant memslot is
DELETED or MOVED, as invalidations in response to PUNCH_HOLE are predicated
on memslot bindings (KVM doesn't know what GFN range(s) to invalidate
without a binding). And more importantly, the VMSA mapping requires a
memslot, i.e. must be invalidated if its memslots disappears, regardless of
the state of the underlying guest_memfd inode.
Failure to invalidate the vCPU's control.vmsa_pa (which is checked by
pre_sev_run()) can prevent KVM from properly freeing the page as firmware
will reject the RMPUPDATE to reclaim the page with FAIL_INUSE if the vCPU
is actively running, i.e. if VMSA page is in-use. That in turn leads to an
RMP #PF on the next use, as the page will still be assigned to the SNP VM.
SEV-SNP: RMPUPDATE failed for PFN 78d198, pg_level: 1, ret: 3
SEV-SNP: PFN 0x78d198, RMP entry: [0xfff0000000144001 - 0x000000000000000f]
CPU: 3 UID: 0 PID: 31345 Comm: sev_snp_vmsa_pu Tainted: G U O
Tainted: [U]=USER, [O]=OOT_MODULE
Hardware name: Google, Inc. Arcadia_IT_80/Arcadia_IT_80, BIOS 34.86.0-102 01/25/2026
Call Trace:
Unknown