published February 26, 2025
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
powerpc/64s: Don't use DSISR for SLB faults
Since commit 46ddcb3950a2 ("powerpc/mm: Show if a bad page fault on data
is read or write.") we use page_fault_is_write(regs->dsisr) in
__bad_page_fault() to determine if the fault is for a read or write, and
change the message printed accordingly.
But SLB faults, aka Data Segment Interrupts, don't set DSISR (Data
Storage Interrupt Status Register) to a useful value. All ISA versions
from v2.03 through v3.1 specify that the Data Segment Interrupt sets
DSISR "to an undefined value". As far as I can see there's no mention of
SLB faults setting DSISR in any BookIV content either.
This manifests as accesses that should be a read being incorrectly
reported as writes, for example, using the xmon "dump" command:
0:mon> d 0x5deadbeef0000000
5deadbeef0000000
[359526.415354][ C6] BUG: Unable to handle kernel data access on write at 0x5deadbeef0000000
[359526.415611][ C6] Faulting instruction address: 0xc00000000010a300
cpu 0x6: Vector: 380 (Data SLB Access) at [c00000000ffbf400]
pc: c00000000010a300: mread+0x90/0x190
If we disassemble the PC, we see a load instruction:
0:mon> di c00000000010a300
c00000000010a300 89490000 lbz r10,0(r9)
We can also see in exceptions-64s.S that the data_access_slb block
doesn't set IDSISR=1, which means it doesn't load DSISR into pt_regs. So
the value we're using to determine if the fault is a read/write is some
stale value in pt_regs from a previous page fault.
Rework the printing logic to separate the SLB fault case out, and only
print read/write in the cases where we can determine it.
The result looks like eg:
0:mon> d 0x5deadbeef0000000
5deadbeef0000000
[ 721.779525][ C6] BUG: Unable to handle kernel data access at 0x5deadbeef0000000
[ 721.779697][ C6] Faulting instruction address: 0xc00000000014cbe0
cpu 0x6: Vector: 380 (Data SLB Access) at [c00000000ffbf390]
0:mon> d 0
0000000000000000
[ 742.793242][ C6] BUG: Kernel NULL pointer dereference at 0x00000000
[ 742.793316][ C6] Faulting instruction address: 0xc00000000014cbe0
cpu 0x6: Vector: 380 (Data SLB Access) at [c00000000ffbf390]