Unmapping virtual machine guest memory from the host kernel's direct map is a successful mitigation against Spectre-style transient execution issues: If the kernel page tables do not contain entries pointing to guest memory, then any attempted speculative read through the direct map will necessarily be blocked by the MMU before any observable microarchitectural side-effects happen. This means that Spectre-gadgets and similar cannot be used to target virtual machine memory. Roughly 60% of speculative execution issues fall into this category [1, Table 1].
This patch series extends guest_memfd with the ability to remove its memory from the host kernel's direct map, to be able to attain the above protection for KVM guests running inside guest_memfd.
=== Changes to v2 ===
- Handle direct map removal for physically contiguous pages in arch code (Mike R.) - Track the direct map state in guest_memfd itself instead of at the folio level, to prepare for huge pages support (Sean C.) - Allow configuring direct map state of not-yet faulted in memory (Vishal A.) - Pay attention to alignment in ftrace structs (Steven R.)
Most significantly, I've reduced the patch series to focus only on direct map removal for guest_memfd for now, leaving the whole "how to do non-CoCo VMs in guest_memfd" for later. If this separation is acceptable, then I think I can drop the RFC tag in the next revision (I've mainly kept it here because I'm not entirely sure what to do with patches 3 and 4).
=== Implementation ===
This patch series introduces a new flag to the KVM_CREATE_GUEST_MEMFD that causes guest_memfd to remove its pages from the host kernel's direct map immediately after population/preparation. It also adds infrastructure for tracking the direct map state of all gmem folios inside the guest_memfd inode. Storing this information in the inode has the advantage that the code is ready for future hugepages extensions, where only removing/reinserting direct map entries for sub-ranges of a huge folio is a valid usecase, and it allows pre-configuring the direct map state of not-yet faulted in parts of memory (for example, when the VMM is receiving a RX virtio buffer from the guest).
=== Summary ===
Patch 1 (from Mike Rapoport) adds arch APIs for manipulating the direct map for ranges of physically contiguous pages, which are used by guest_memfd in follow up patches. Patch 2 adds the KVM_GMEM_NO_DIRECT_MAP flag and the logic for configuring direct map state of freshly prepared folios. Patches 3 and 4 mainly serve an illustrative purpose, to show how the framework from patch 2 can be extended with routines for runtime direct map manipulation. Patches 5 and 6 deal with documentation and self-tests respectively.
[1]: https://download.vusec.net/papers/quarantine_raid23.pdf [RFC v1]: https://lore.kernel.org/kvm/20240709132041.3625501-1-roypat@amazon.co.uk/ [RFC v2]: https://lore.kernel.org/kvm/20240910163038.1298452-1-roypat@amazon.co.uk/
Mike Rapoport (Microsoft) (1): arch: introduce set_direct_map_valid_noflush()
Patrick Roy (5): kvm: gmem: add flag to remove memory from kernel direct map kvm: gmem: implement direct map manipulation routines kvm: gmem: add trace point for direct map state changes kvm: document KVM_GMEM_NO_DIRECT_MAP flag kvm: selftests: run gmem tests with KVM_GMEM_NO_DIRECT_MAP set
Documentation/virt/kvm/api.rst | 14 + arch/arm64/include/asm/set_memory.h | 1 + arch/arm64/mm/pageattr.c | 10 + arch/loongarch/include/asm/set_memory.h | 1 + arch/loongarch/mm/pageattr.c | 21 ++ arch/riscv/include/asm/set_memory.h | 1 + arch/riscv/mm/pageattr.c | 15 + arch/s390/include/asm/set_memory.h | 1 + arch/s390/mm/pageattr.c | 11 + arch/x86/include/asm/set_memory.h | 1 + arch/x86/mm/pat/set_memory.c | 8 + include/linux/set_memory.h | 6 + include/trace/events/kvm.h | 22 ++ include/uapi/linux/kvm.h | 2 + .../testing/selftests/kvm/guest_memfd_test.c | 2 +- .../kvm/x86_64/private_mem_conversions_test.c | 7 +- virt/kvm/guest_memfd.c | 280 +++++++++++++++++- 17 files changed, 384 insertions(+), 19 deletions(-)
base-commit: 5cb1659f412041e4780f2e8ee49b2e03728a2ba6