Ubuntu Security Notice 5072-1 - Maxim Levitsky and Paolo Bonzini discovered that the KVM hypervisor implementation for AMD processors in the Linux kernel allowed a guest VM to disable restrictions on VMLOAD/VMSAVE in a nested guest. An attacker in a guest VM could use this to read or write portions of the host's physical memory. Maxim Levitsky discovered that the KVM hypervisor implementation for AMD processors in the Linux kernel did not properly prevent a guest VM from enabling AVIC in nested guest VMs. An attacker in a guest VM could use this to write to portions of the host's physical memory. Various other issues were also addressed.
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Ubuntu Security Notice USN-5072-1
September 08, 2021
linux-azure-5.8, linux-oem-5.10 vulnerabilities
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A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:
- Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
Summary:
Several security issues were fixed in the Linux kernel.
Software Description:
- linux-azure-5.8: Linux kernel for Microsoft Azure cloud systems
- linux-oem-5.10: Linux kernel for OEM systems
Details:
Maxim Levitsky and Paolo Bonzini discovered that the KVM hypervisor
implementation for AMD processors in the Linux kernel allowed a guest VM to
disable restrictions on VMLOAD/VMSAVE in a nested guest. An attacker in a
guest VM could use this to read or write portions of the host's physical
memory. (CVE-2021-3656)
Maxim Levitsky discovered that the KVM hypervisor implementation for AMD
processors in the Linux kernel did not properly prevent a guest VM from
enabling AVIC in nested guest VMs. An attacker in a guest VM could use this
to write to portions of the host's physical memory. (CVE-2021-3653)
Update instructions:
The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following
package versions:
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS:
linux-image-5.10.0-1045-oem 5.10.0-1045.47
linux-image-5.8.0-1041-azure 5.8.0-1041.44~20.04.1
linux-image-azure 5.8.0.1041.44~20.04.13
linux-image-oem-20.04 5.10.0.1045.47
linux-image-oem-20.04b 5.10.0.1045.47
After a standard system update you need to reboot your computer to make
all the necessary changes.
ATTENTION: Due to an unavoidable ABI change the kernel updates have
been given a new version number, which requires you to recompile and
reinstall all third party kernel modules you might have installed.
Unless you manually uninstalled the standard kernel metapackages
(e.g. linux-generic, linux-generic-lts-RELEASE, linux-virtual,
linux-powerpc), a standard system upgrade will automatically perform
this as well.
References:
https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-5072-1
CVE-2021-3653, CVE-2021-3656
Package Information:
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-azure-5.8/5.8.0-1041.44~20.04.1
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-oem-5.10/5.10.0-1045.47