Skip to content
Commit a7315d2f authored by Nadav Amit's avatar Nadav Amit Committed by Paolo Bonzini
Browse files

KVM: x86: Emulator performs privilege checks on __linearize



When segment is accessed, real hardware does not perform any privilege level
checks.  In contrast, KVM emulator does. This causes some discrepencies from
real hardware. For instance, reading from readable code segment may fail due to
incorrect segment checks. In addition, it introduces unnecassary overhead.

To reference Intel SDM 5.5 ("Privilege Levels"): "Privilege levels are checked
when the segment selector of a segment descriptor is loaded into a segment
register." The SDM never mentions privilege level checks during memory access,
except for loading far pointers in section 5.10 ("Pointer Validation"). Those
are actually segment selector loads and are emulated in the similarily (i.e.,
regardless to __linearize checks).

This behavior was also checked using sysexit. A data-segment whose DPL=0 was
loaded, and after sysexit (CPL=3) it is still accessible.

Therefore, all the privilege level checks in __linearize are removed.

Signed-off-by: default avatarNadav Amit <namit@cs.technion.ac.il>
Signed-off-by: default avatarPaolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
parent 1c1c35ae
Loading
Loading
Loading
Loading
0% Loading or .
You are about to add 0 people to the discussion. Proceed with caution.
Finish editing this message first!
Please register or to comment