mirror-linux/Documentation/virt
Yang Weijiang 9d6812d415 KVM: x86: Enable guest SSP read/write interface with new uAPIs
Add a KVM-defined ONE_REG register, KVM_REG_GUEST_SSP, to let userspace
save and restore the guest's Shadow Stack Pointer (SSP).  On both Intel
and AMD, SSP is a hardware register that can only be accessed by software
via dedicated ISA (e.g. RDSSP) or via VMCS/VMCB fields (used by hardware
to context switch SSP at entry/exit).  As a result, SSP doesn't fit in
any of KVM's existing interfaces for saving/restoring state.

Internally, treat SSP as a fake/synthetic MSR, as the semantics of writes
to SSP follow that of several other Shadow Stack MSRs, e.g. the PLx_SSP
MSRs.  Use a translation layer to hide the KVM-internal MSR index so that
the arbitrary index doesn't become ABI, e.g. so that KVM can rework its
implementation as needed, so long as the ONE_REG ABI is maintained.

Explicitly reject accesses to SSP if the vCPU doesn't have Shadow Stack
support to avoid running afoul of ignore_msrs, which unfortunately applies
to host-initiated accesses (which is a discussion for another day).  I.e.
ensure consistent behavior for KVM-defined registers irrespective of
ignore_msrs.

Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/aca9d389-f11e-4811-90cf-d98e345a5cc2@intel.com
Suggested-by: Sean Christopherson <seanjc@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Yang Weijiang <weijiang.yang@intel.com>
Tested-by: Mathias Krause <minipli@grsecurity.net>
Tested-by: John Allen <john.allen@amd.com>
Tested-by: Rick Edgecombe <rick.p.edgecombe@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Chao Gao <chao.gao@intel.com>
Reviewed-by: Binbin Wu <binbin.wu@linux.intel.com>
Reviewed-by: Xiaoyao Li <xiaoyao.li@intel.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250919223258.1604852-14-seanjc@google.com
Co-developed-by: Sean Christopherson <seanjc@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Sean Christopherson <seanjc@google.com>
2025-09-23 09:10:33 -07:00
..
acrn
coco ARM: 2024-07-20 12:41:03 -07:00
hyperv Documentation: hyperv: Update VMBus doc with new features and info 2025-05-23 16:30:56 +00:00
kvm KVM: x86: Enable guest SSP read/write interface with new uAPIs 2025-09-23 09:10:33 -07:00
uml um: Remove legacy network transport infrastructure 2025-05-05 10:26:59 +02:00
guest-halt-polling.rst Documentation: virt: correct location of haltpoll module params 2023-06-16 08:17:21 -06:00
index.rst Docs/subsystem-apis: Remove '[The ]Linux' prefixes from titles of listed documents 2023-01-24 15:27:08 -07:00
ne_overview.rst nitro_enclaves: Update documentation for Arm64 support 2021-09-14 11:11:20 +02:00
paravirt_ops.rst Documentation: virt: Clean up paravirt_ops doc 2023-06-19 12:09:54 +02:00