Re: [patch V2 04/25] x86/apic: Make apic_pending_intr_clear() more robust

Andrew Cooper
2019-07-05T21:16:56Z

On 05/07/2019 21:49, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> On 05/07/19 22:25, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
>> In practice, this makes Linux vulnerable to CVE-2011-1898 / XSA-3, which
>> I'm disappointed to see wasn't shared with other software vendors at the
>> time.
> Oh, that brings back memories. At the time I was working on Xen, so I
> remember that CVE. IIRC there was some mitigation but the fix was
> basically to print a very scary error message if you used VT-d without
> interrupt remapping. Maybe force the user to add something on the Xen
> command line too?

It was before my time.  I have no public comment on how the other
aspects of it were handled.

>> Is there any serious usage of virtualization w/o interrupt remapping left
>> or have the machines which are not capable been retired already?
> I think they were already starting to disappear in 2011, as I don't
> remember much worry about customers that were using systems without it.

ISTR Nehalem/Westmere era systems were the first to support interrupt
remapping, but were totally crippled with errata to the point of needing
to turn a prerequisite feature (Queued Invalidation) off.  I believe
later systems have it working to a first approximation.

As to the original question, whether people should be using such systems
is a different question to whether they actually are.

~Andrew