[PATCH net v3] vsock/virtio: cap TX credit to local buffer size
From: Melbin K Mathew <hidden>
Date: 2025-12-11 12:51:50
Also in:
kvm, lkml, virtualization
Subsystem:
networking [general], the rest, virtio and vhost vsock driver, virtio core, vm sockets (af_vsock) · Maintainers:
"David S. Miller", Eric Dumazet, Jakub Kicinski, Paolo Abeni, Linus Torvalds, Stefan Hajnoczi, Stefano Garzarella, "Michael S. Tsirkin", Jason Wang
The virtio vsock transport currently derives its TX credit directly from
peer_buf_alloc, which is populated from the remote endpoint's
SO_VM_SOCKETS_BUFFER_SIZE value.
On the host side, this means the amount of data we are willing to queue
for a given connection is scaled purely by a peer-chosen value, rather
than by the host's own vsock buffer configuration. A guest that
advertises a very large buffer and reads slowly can cause the host to
allocate a correspondingly large amount of sk_buff memory for that
connection.
In practice, a malicious guest can:
- set a large AF_VSOCK buffer size (e.g. 2 GiB) with
SO_VM_SOCKETS_BUFFER_MAX_SIZE / SO_VM_SOCKETS_BUFFER_SIZE, and
- open multiple connections to a host vsock service that sends data
while the guest drains slowly.
On an unconstrained host this can drive Slab/SUnreclaim into the tens of
GiB range, causing allocation failures and OOM kills in unrelated host
processes while the offending VM remains running.
On non-virtio transports and compatibility:
- VMCI uses the AF_VSOCK buffer knobs to size its queue pairs per
socket based on the local vsk->buffer_* values; the remote side
can’t enlarge those queues beyond what the local endpoint
configured.
- Hyper-V’s vsock transport uses fixed-size VMBus ring buffers and
an MTU bound; there is no peer-controlled credit field comparable
to peer_buf_alloc, and the remote endpoint can’t drive in-flight
kernel memory above those ring sizes.
- The loopback path reuses virtio_transport_common.c, so it
naturally follows the same semantics as the virtio transport.
Make virtio-vsock consistent with that model by intersecting the peer’s
advertised receive window with the local vsock buffer size when
computing TX credit. We introduce a small helper and use it in
virtio_transport_get_credit(), virtio_transport_has_space() and
virtio_transport_seqpacket_enqueue(), so that:
effective_tx_window = min(peer_buf_alloc, buf_alloc)
This prevents a remote endpoint from forcing us to queue more data than
our own configuration allows, while preserving the existing credit
semantics and keeping virtio-vsock compatible with the other transports.
On an unpatched Ubuntu 22.04 host (~64 GiB RAM), running a PoC with
32 guest vsock connections advertising 2 GiB each and reading slowly
drove Slab/SUnreclaim from ~0.5 GiB to ~57 GiB and the system only
recovered after killing the QEMU process.
With this patch applied, rerunning the same PoC yields:
Before:
MemFree: ~61.6 GiB
MemAvailable: ~62.3 GiB
Slab: ~142 MiB
SUnreclaim: ~117 MiB
After 32 high-credit connections:
MemFree: ~61.5 GiB
MemAvailable: ~62.3 GiB
Slab: ~178 MiB
SUnreclaim: ~152 MiB
i.e. only ~35 MiB increase in Slab/SUnreclaim, no host OOM, and the
guest remains responsive.
Fixes: 06a8fc78367d ("VSOCK: Introduce virtio_vsock_common.ko")
Suggested-by: Stefano Garzarella <sgarzare@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Melbin K Mathew <redacted>
---
net/vmw_vsock/virtio_transport_common.c | 27 ++++++++++++++++++++++---
1 file changed, 24 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
diff --git a/net/vmw_vsock/virtio_transport_common.c b/net/vmw_vsock/virtio_transport_common.c
index dcc8a1d58..02eeb96dd 100644
--- a/net/vmw_vsock/virtio_transport_common.c
+++ b/net/vmw_vsock/virtio_transport_common.c@@ -491,6 +491,25 @@ void virtio_transport_consume_skb_sent(struct sk_buff *skb, bool consume) } EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(virtio_transport_consume_skb_sent); +/* Return the effective peer buffer size for TX credit computation. + * + * The peer advertises its receive buffer via peer_buf_alloc, but we + * cap that to our local buf_alloc (derived from + * SO_VM_SOCKETS_BUFFER_SIZE and already clamped to buffer_max_size) + * so that a remote endpoint cannot force us to queue more data than + * our own configuration allows. + */ +static u32 virtio_transport_tx_buf_alloc(struct virtio_vsock_sock *vvs) +{ + return min(vvs->peer_buf_alloc, vvs->buf_alloc); +} + u32 virtio_transport_get_credit(struct virtio_vsock_sock *vvs, u32 credit) { u32 ret;
@@ -499,7 +518,8 @@ u32 virtio_transport_get_credit(struct virtio_vsock_sock *vvs, u32 credit) return 0; spin_lock_bh(&vvs->tx_lock); - ret = vvs->peer_buf_alloc - (vvs->tx_cnt - vvs->peer_fwd_cnt); + ret = virtio_transport_tx_buf_alloc(vvs) - + (vvs->tx_cnt - vvs->peer_fwd_cnt); if (ret > credit) ret = credit; vvs->tx_cnt += ret;
@@ -831,7 +851,7 @@ virtio_transport_seqpacket_enqueue(struct vsock_sock *vsk, spin_lock_bh(&vvs->tx_lock); - if (len > vvs->peer_buf_alloc) { + if (len > virtio_transport_tx_buf_alloc(vvs)) { spin_unlock_bh(&vvs->tx_lock); return -EMSGSIZE; }
@@ -882,7 +902,8 @@ static s64 virtio_transport_has_space(struct vsock_sock *vsk) struct virtio_vsock_sock *vvs = vsk->trans; s64 bytes; - bytes = (s64)vvs->peer_buf_alloc - (vvs->tx_cnt - vvs->peer_fwd_cnt); + bytes = (s64)virtio_transport_tx_buf_alloc(vvs) - + (vvs->tx_cnt - vvs->peer_fwd_cnt); if (bytes < 0) bytes = 0;
--
2.34.1