From 487d1edb9a6005cf790c7fe59f25ad1e5cb5817b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Denys Vlasenko Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2015 11:59:16 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] x86/asm/entry/64: Fix comment about SYSENTER MSRs The comment is ancient, it dates to the time when only AMD's x86_64 implementation existed. AMD wasn't (and still isn't) supporting SYSENTER, so these writes were "just in case" back then. This has changed: Intel's x86_64 appeared, and Intel does support SYSENTER in long mode. "Some future 64-bit CPU" is here already. The code may appear "buggy" for AMD as it stands, since MSR_IA32_SYSENTER_EIP is only 32-bit for AMD CPUs. Writing a kernel function's address to it would drop high bits. Subsequent use of this MSR for branch via SYSENTER seem to allow user to transition to CPL0 while executing his code. Scary, eh? Explain why that is not a bug: because SYSENTER insn would not work on AMD CPU. Signed-off-by: Denys Vlasenko Cc: Alexei Starovoitov Cc: Andy Lutomirski Cc: Borislav Petkov Cc: Frederic Weisbecker Cc: H. Peter Anvin Cc: Kees Cook Cc: Linus Torvalds Cc: Oleg Nesterov Cc: Steven Rostedt Cc: Will Drewry Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1427453956-21931-1-git-send-email-dvlasenk@redhat.com Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar --- arch/x86/kernel/cpu/common.c | 6 ++++-- 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/common.c b/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/common.c index c928a7ae1099..71e4adcb15f1 100644 --- a/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/common.c +++ b/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/common.c @@ -1173,8 +1173,10 @@ void syscall_init(void) #ifdef CONFIG_IA32_EMULATION wrmsrl(MSR_CSTAR, ia32_cstar_target); /* - * Always load these, in case some future 64-bit CPU supports - * SYSENTER from compat mode too: + * This only works on Intel CPUs. + * On AMD CPUs these MSRs are 32-bit, CPU truncates MSR_IA32_SYSENTER_EIP. + * This does not cause SYSENTER to jump to the wrong location, because + * AMD doesn't allow SYSENTER in long mode (either 32- or 64-bit). */ wrmsrl_safe(MSR_IA32_SYSENTER_CS, (u64)__KERNEL_CS); wrmsrl_safe(MSR_IA32_SYSENTER_ESP, 0ULL); -- 2.20.1