Hi Stefano, Michael,

Thanks for the feedback and for pointing out the s64 issue in
virtio_transport_get_credit() and the vsock_test regression.

I can take this up and send a small series:

  1/2 – vsock/virtio: cap TX credit to local buffer size
        - use a helper to bound peer_buf_alloc by buf_alloc
        - compute available credit in s64 like has_space(), and clamp
          negative values to zero before applying the caller’s credit

  2/2 – vsock/test: fix seqpacket message bounds test
        - include your vsock_test.c change so the seqpacket bounds test
          keeps working with the corrected TX credit handling

I’ll roll these into a [PATCH net v4 0/2] series and send it out shortly.

Thanks again for all the guidance,
Melbin


On Thu, Dec 11, 2025 at 1:57 PM Stefano Garzarella [off-list ref] wrote:

On Thu, Dec 11, 2025 at 08:05:11AM -0500, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:

quoted

On Thu, Dec 11, 2025 at 01:51:04PM +0100, Melbin K Mathew wrote:

quoted

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;

Acked-by: Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com>


Looking at this, why is one place casting to s64 the other is not?

Yeah, I pointed out that too in previous interactions. IMO we should fix
virtio_transport_get_credit() since the peer can reduce `peer_buf_alloc`
so it will overflow. Fortunately, we are limited by the credit requested
by the caller, but we are still sending stuff when we shouldn't be.

@Melbin let me know if you will fix it, otherwise I can do that, but I'd
like to do in a single series (multiple patches), since they depends on
each other.

So if you prefer, I can pickup this patch and post a series with this +
the other fix + the fix on the test I posted on the v2.

Stefano