[PATCH 6.12 095/169] vsock/virtio: cap TX credit to local buffer size

Greg Kroah-Hartman
2026-01-28T15:45:53Z

From: Melbin K Mathew <mlbnkm1@gmail.com>

[ Upstream commit 8ee784fdf006cbe8739cfa093f54d326cbf54037 ]

The virtio transports derives its TX credit directly from peer_buf_alloc,
which is set from the remote endpoint's SO_VM_SOCKETS_BUFFER_SIZE value.

On the host side this means that the amount of data we are willing to
queue for a connection is scaled by a guest-chosen buffer size, rather
than the host's own vsock configuration. A malicious guest can advertise
a large buffer and read slowly, causing the host to allocate a
correspondingly large amount of sk_buff memory.
The same thing would happen in the guest with a malicious host, since
virtio transports share the same code base.

Introduce a small helper, virtio_transport_tx_buf_size(), that
returns min(peer_buf_alloc, buf_alloc), and use it wherever we consume
peer_buf_alloc.

This ensures the effective TX window is bounded by both the peer's
advertised buffer and our own buf_alloc (already clamped to
buffer_max_size via SO_VM_SOCKETS_BUFFER_MAX_SIZE), so a remote peer
cannot force the other to queue more data than allowed by its own
vsock settings.

On an unpatched Ubuntu 22.04 host (~64 GiB RAM), running a PoC with
32 guest vsock connections advertising 2 GiB each and reading slowly
drove Slab/SUnreclaim from ~0.5 GiB to ~57 GiB; the system only
recovered after killing the QEMU process. That said, if QEMU memory is
limited with cgroups, the maximum memory used will be limited.

With this patch applied:

Before:
MemFree: ~61.6 GiB
Slab: ~142 MiB
SUnreclaim: ~117 MiB

After 32 high-credit connections:
MemFree: ~61.5 GiB
Slab: ~178 MiB
SUnreclaim: ~152 MiB

Only ~35 MiB increase in Slab/SUnreclaim, no host OOM, and the guest
remains responsive.

Compatibility with non-virtio transports:

- VMCI uses the AF_VSOCK buffer knobs to size its queue pairs per
socket based on the local vsk->buffer_* values; the remote side
cannot enlarge those queues beyond what the local endpoint
configured.

- Hyper-V's vsock transport uses fixed-size VMBus ring buffers and
an MTU bound; there is no peer-controlled credit field comparable
to peer_buf_alloc, and the remote endpoint cannot drive in-flight
kernel memory above those ring sizes.

- The loopback path reuses virtio_transport_common.c, so it
naturally follows the same semantics as the virtio transport.

This change is limited to virtio_transport_common.c and thus affects
virtio-vsock, vhost-vsock, and loopback, bringing them in line with the
"remote window intersected with local policy" behaviour that VMCI and
Hyper-V already effectively have.

Fixes: 06a8fc78367d ("VSOCK: Introduce virtio_vsock_common.ko")
Suggested-by: Stefano Garzarella <sgarzare@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Melbin K Mathew <mlbnkm1@gmail.com>
[Stefano: small adjustments after changing the previous patch]
[Stefano: tweak the commit message]
Signed-off-by: Stefano Garzarella <sgarzare@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Luigi Leonardi <leonardi@redhat.com>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260121093628.9941-4-sgarzare@redhat.com
Acked-by: Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Paolo Abeni <pabeni@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin <sashal@kernel.org>
---
net/vmw_vsock/virtio_transport_common.c | 14 ++++++++++++--
1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/net/vmw_vsock/virtio_transport_common.c b/net/vmw_vsock/virtio_transport_common.c
index dfb8cad4259c2..a2f0f81be1d5d 100644
--- a/net/vmw_vsock/virtio_transport_common.c
+++ b/net/vmw_vsock/virtio_transport_common.c
@@ -819,6 +819,15 @@ virtio_transport_seqpacket_dequeue(struct vsock_sock *vsk,
}
EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(virtio_transport_seqpacket_dequeue);

+static u32 virtio_transport_tx_buf_size(struct virtio_vsock_sock *vvs)
+{
+ /* The peer advertises its receive buffer via peer_buf_alloc, but we
+ * cap it to our local buf_alloc so a remote peer cannot force us to
+ * queue more data than our own buffer configuration allows.
+ */
+ return min(vvs->peer_buf_alloc, vvs->buf_alloc);
+}
+
int
virtio_transport_seqpacket_enqueue(struct vsock_sock *vsk,
struct msghdr *msg,
@@ -828,7 +837,7 @@ virtio_transport_seqpacket_enqueue(struct vsock_sock *vsk,

spin_lock_bh(&vvs->tx_lock);

- if (len > vvs->peer_buf_alloc) {
+ if (len > virtio_transport_tx_buf_size(vvs)) {
spin_unlock_bh(&vvs->tx_lock);
return -EMSGSIZE;
}
@@ -882,7 +891,8 @@ static s64 virtio_transport_has_space(struct virtio_vsock_sock *vvs)
* we have bytes in flight (tx_cnt - peer_fwd_cnt), the subtraction
* does not underflow.
*/
- bytes = (s64)vvs->peer_buf_alloc - (vvs->tx_cnt - vvs->peer_fwd_cnt);
+ bytes = (s64)virtio_transport_tx_buf_size(vvs) -
+ (vvs->tx_cnt - vvs->peer_fwd_cnt);
if (bytes < 0)
bytes = 0;

--
2.51.0