CVE-2023-53713

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

arm64: sme: Use STR P to clear FFR context field in streaming SVE mode

The FFR is a predicate register which can vary between 16 and 256 bits in size depending upon the configured vector length. When saving the SVE state in streaming SVE mode, the FFR register is inaccessible and so commit 9f5848665788 ("arm64/sve: Make access to FFR optional") simply clears the FFR field of the in-memory context structure. Unfortunately, it achieves this using an unconditional 8-byte store and so if the SME vector length is anything other than 64 bytes in size we will either fail to clear the entire field or, worse, we will corrupt memory immediately following the structure. This has led to intermittent kfence splats in CI [1] and can trigger kmalloc Redzone corruption messages when running the 'fp-stress' kselftest:

| ============================================================================= | BUG kmalloc-1k (Not tainted): kmalloc Redzone overwritten | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | 0xffff000809bf1e22-0xffff000809bf1e27 @offset=7714. First byte 0x0 instead of 0xcc | Allocated in do_sme_acc+0x9c/0x220 age=2613 cpu=1 pid=531 | __kmalloc+0x8c/0xcc | do_sme_acc+0x9c/0x220 | ...

Replace the 8-byte store with a store of a predicate register which has been zero-initialised with PFALSE, ensuring that the entire field is cleared in memory.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/r/CA+G9fYtU7HsV0R0dp4XEH5xXHSJFw8KyDf5VQrLLfMxWfxQkag@mail.gmail.com

This vulnerability is rated as having a Moderate severity impact because it requires local execution privileges and is restricted to ARM64 systems with hardware support for the Scalable Matrix Extension (SME). On affected ARM64 hardware, saving processor vector state in streaming SVE mode with non-standard vector lengths can corrupt adjacent kernel memory, leading to kernel instability or a denial of service. Architectures other than ARM64 and ARM processors lacking SME capabilities are unaffected by this issue.

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.