CVE-2021-47228: x86/ioremap: Map EFI-reserved memory as encrypted for SEV

Severity: medium (CVSS 6.2 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2024-05-21 · updated 2026-06-17

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: x86/ioremap: Map EFI-reserved memory as encrypted for SEV Some drivers require memory that is marked as EFI boot services data. In order for this memory to not be re-used by the kernel after ExitBootServices(), efi_mem_reserve() is used to preserve it by inserting a new EFI memory descriptor and marking it with the EFI_MEMORY_RUNTIME attribute. Under SEV, memory marked with the EFI_MEMORY_RUNTIME attribute needs to be mapped encrypted by Linux, otherwise the kernel might crash at boot like below: EFI Variables Facility v0.08 2004-May-17 general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0x3597688770a868b2: 0000 [#1] SMP NOPTI CPU: 13 PID: 1 Comm: swapper/0 Not tainted 5.12.4-2-default #1 openSUSE Tumbleweed Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS 0.0.0 02/06/2015 RIP: 0010:efi_mokvar_entry_next [...] Call Trace: efi_mokvar_sysfs_init ? efi_mokvar_table_init do_one_initcall ? __kmalloc kernel_init_freeable ? rest_init kernel_init ret_from_fork Expand the __ioremap_check_other() function to additionally check for this other type of boot data reserved at runtime and indicate that it should be mapped encrypted for an SEV guest. [ bp: Massage commit message. ]

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 5.10 before 5.10.46; from 5.11 before 5.12.13; 5.13-rc1, 5.13-rc2, 5.13-rc3, 5.13-rc4, 5.13-rc5, 5.13-rc6 — fixed in 5.10.46, 5.12.13

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.10.46, 5.12.13. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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