In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
powerpc/rtas: Fix RTAS MSR[HV] handling for Cell
The semi-recent changes to MSR handling when entering RTAS (firmware)
cause crashes on IBM Cell machines. An example trace:
kernel tried to execute user page (2fff01a8) - exploit attempt? (uid: 0)
BUG: Unable to handle kernel instruction fetch
Faulting instruction address: 0x2fff01a8
Oops: Kernel access of bad area, sig: 11 [#1]
BE PAGE_SIZE=64K MMU=Hash SMP NR_CPUS=4 NUMA Cell
Modules linked in:
CPU: 0 PID: 0 Comm: swapper/0 Tainted: G W 6.0.0-rc2-00433-gede0a8d3307a #207
NIP: 000000002fff01a8 LR: 0000000000032608 CTR: 0000000000000000
REGS: c0000000015236b0 TRAP: 0400 Tainted: G W (6.0.0-rc2-00433-gede0a8d3307a)
MSR: 0000000008001002 <ME,RI> CR: 00000000 XER: 20000000
...
NIP 0x2fff01a8
LR 0x32608
Call Trace:
0xc00000000143c5f8 (unreliable)
.rtas_call+0x224/0x320
.rtas_get_boot_time+0x70/0x150
.read_persistent_clock64+0x114/0x140
.read_persistent_wall_and_boot_offset+0x24/0x80
.timekeeping_init+0x40/0x29c
.start_kernel+0x674/0x8f0
start_here_common+0x1c/0x50
Unlike PAPR platforms where RTAS is only used in guests, on the IBM Cell
machines Linux runs with MSR[HV] set but also uses RTAS, provided by
SLOF.
Fix it by copying the MSR[HV] bit from the MSR value we've just read
using mfmsr into the value used for RTAS.
It seems like we could also fix it using an #ifdef CELL to set MSR[HV],
but that doesn't work because it's possible to build a single kernel
image that runs on both Cell native and pseries.
Publication date: Wed, 18 Jun 2025 11:00:00 +0000