CVE-2025-38334

x86/sgx: Prevent attempts to reclaim poisoned pages

published July 10, 2025

CVSS
—
EPSS
0%
Percentile
6.8
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

x86/sgx: Prevent attempts to reclaim poisoned pages

TL;DR: SGX page reclaim touches the page to copy its contents to

secondary storage. SGX instructions do not gracefully handle machine

checks. Despite this, the existing SGX code will try to reclaim pages

that it _knows_ are poisoned. Avoid even trying to reclaim poisoned pages.

The longer story:

Pages used by an enclave only get epc_page->poison set in

arch_memory_failure() but they currently stay on sgx_active_page_list until

sgx_encl_release(), with the SGX_EPC_PAGE_RECLAIMER_TRACKED flag untouched.

epc_page->poison is not checked in the reclaimer logic meaning that, if other

conditions are met, an attempt will be made to reclaim an EPC page that was

poisoned. This is bad because 1. we don't want that page to end up added

to another enclave and 2. it is likely to cause one core to shut down

and the kernel to panic.

Specifically, reclaiming uses microcode operations including "EWB" which

accesses the EPC page contents to encrypt and write them out to non-SGX

memory. Those operations cannot handle MCEs in their accesses other than

by putting the executing core into a special shutdown state (affecting

both threads with HT.) The kernel will subsequently panic on the

remaining cores seeing the core didn't enter MCE handler(s) in time.

Call sgx_unmark_page_reclaimable() to remove the affected EPC page from

sgx_active_page_list on memory error to stop it being considered for

reclaiming.

Testing epc_page->poison in sgx_reclaim_pages() would also work but I assume

it's better to add code in the less likely paths.

The affected EPC page is not added to &node->sgx_poison_page_list until

later in sgx_encl_release()->sgx_free_epc_page() when it is EREMOVEd.

Membership on other lists doesn't change to avoid changing any of the

lists' semantics except for sgx_active_page_list. There's a "TBD" comment

in arch_memory_failure() about pre-emptive actions, the goal here is not

to address everything that it may imply.

This also doesn't completely close the time window when a memory error

notification will be fatal (for a not previously poisoned EPC page) --

the MCE can happen after sgx_reclaim_pages() has selected its candidates

or even *inside* a microcode operation (actually easy to trigger due to

the amount of time spent in them.)

The spinlock in sgx_unmark_page_reclaimable() is safe because

memory_failure() runs in process context and no spinlocks are held,

explicitly noted in a mm/memory-failure.c comment.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS
Not scored
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00176 · 6.8th percentile
Published
2025-07-10T08:15Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 10 JUL 08:15Z
    x86/sgx: Prevent attempts to reclaim poisoned pages
    cvelistv5