• Thomas Gleixner's avatar
    x86/speculation/mds: Add mitigation mode VMWERV · 22dd8365
    Thomas Gleixner authored
    In virtualized environments it can happen that the host has the microcode
    update which utilizes the VERW instruction to clear CPU buffers, but the
    hypervisor is not yet updated to expose the X86_FEATURE_MD_CLEAR CPUID bit
    to guests.
    
    Introduce an internal mitigation mode VMWERV which enables the invocation
    of the CPU buffer clearing even if X86_FEATURE_MD_CLEAR is not set. If the
    system has no updated microcode this results in a pointless execution of
    the VERW instruction wasting a few CPU cycles. If the microcode is updated,
    but not exposed to a guest then the CPU buffers will be cleared.
    
    That said: Virtual Machines Will Eventually Receive Vaccine
    Signed-off-by: default avatarThomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
    Reviewed-by: default avatarBorislav Petkov <bp@suse.de>
    Reviewed-by: default avatarJon Masters <jcm@redhat.com>
    Tested-by: default avatarJon Masters <jcm@redhat.com>
    22dd8365
processor.h 25.1 KB