From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Mon, 12 May 2025 00:23:03 +0000 (-0700)
Subject: Merge tag 'its-for-linus-20250509' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git... 
X-Git-Url: https://www.infradead.org/git/?a=commitdiff_plain;h=6f5bf947bab06f37ff931c359fd5770c4d9cbf87;p=users%2Fhch%2Fmisc.git

Merge tag 'its-for-linus-20250509' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip

Pull x86 ITS mitigation from Dave Hansen:
 "Mitigate Indirect Target Selection (ITS) issue.

  I'd describe this one as a good old CPU bug where the behavior is
  _obviously_ wrong, but since it just results in bad predictions it
  wasn't wrong enough to notice. Well, the researchers noticed and also
  realized that thus bug undermined a bunch of existing indirect branch
  mitigations.

  Thus the unusually wide impact on this one. Details:

  ITS is a bug in some Intel CPUs that affects indirect branches
  including RETs in the first half of a cacheline. Due to ITS such
  branches may get wrongly predicted to a target of (direct or indirect)
  branch that is located in the second half of a cacheline. Researchers
  at VUSec found this behavior and reported to Intel.

  Affected processors:

   - Cascade Lake, Cooper Lake, Whiskey Lake V, Coffee Lake R, Comet
     Lake, Ice Lake, Tiger Lake and Rocket Lake.

  Scope of impact:

   - Guest/host isolation:

     When eIBRS is used for guest/host isolation, the indirect branches
     in the VMM may still be predicted with targets corresponding to
     direct branches in the guest.

   - Intra-mode using cBPF:

     cBPF can be used to poison the branch history to exploit ITS.
     Realigning the indirect branches and RETs mitigates this attack
     vector.

   - User/kernel:

     With eIBRS enabled user/kernel isolation is *not* impacted by ITS.

   - Indirect Branch Prediction Barrier (IBPB):

     Due to this bug indirect branches may be predicted with targets
     corresponding to direct branches which were executed prior to IBPB.
     This will be fixed in the microcode.

  Mitigation:

  As indirect branches in the first half of cacheline are affected, the
  mitigation is to replace those indirect branches with a call to thunk that
  is aligned to the second half of the cacheline.

  RETs that take prediction from RSB are not affected, but they may be
  affected by RSB-underflow condition. So, RETs in the first half of
  cacheline are also patched to a return thunk that executes the RET aligned
  to second half of cacheline"

* tag 'its-for-linus-20250509' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip:
  selftest/x86/bugs: Add selftests for ITS
  x86/its: FineIBT-paranoid vs ITS
  x86/its: Use dynamic thunks for indirect branches
  x86/ibt: Keep IBT disabled during alternative patching
  mm/execmem: Unify early execmem_cache behaviour
  x86/its: Align RETs in BHB clear sequence to avoid thunking
  x86/its: Add support for RSB stuffing mitigation
  x86/its: Add "vmexit" option to skip mitigation on some CPUs
  x86/its: Enable Indirect Target Selection mitigation
  x86/its: Add support for ITS-safe return thunk
  x86/its: Add support for ITS-safe indirect thunk
  x86/its: Enumerate Indirect Target Selection (ITS) bug
  Documentation: x86/bugs/its: Add ITS documentation
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