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Message-ID: <20190221130645.GA8281@openwall.com>
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2019 14:06:45 +0100
From: Solar Designer <solar@...nwall.com>
To: Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>, Jann Horn <jannh@...gle.com>,
Dominik Brodowski <linux@...inikbrodowski.net>,
LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
Kernel Hardening <kernel-hardening@...ts.openwall.com>,
X86 ML <x86@...nel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] x86/asm: Pin sensitive CR4 bits
On Wed, Feb 20, 2019 at 01:20:58PM -0800, Kees Cook wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 20, 2019 at 10:49 AM Solar Designer <solar@...nwall.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, Feb 20, 2019 at 10:09:34AM -0800, Kees Cook wrote:
> > > + if (WARN_ONCE((val & cr4_pin) != cr4_pin, "cr4 bypass attempt?!\n"))
> > > + goto again;
> >
> > I think "goto again" is too mild a response given that it occurs after a
> > successful write of a non-pinned value to CR4. I think it'd allow some
> > exploits to eventually win the race: make their desired use of whatever
> > functionality SMEP, etc. would have prevented - which may be just a few
> > instructions they need to run - before the CR4 value is reverted after
> > "goto again". I think it's one of those cases where a kernel panic
> > would be more appropriate.
>
> It will not land upstream with a BUG() or panic(). Linus has
> explicitly stated that none of this work can do that until it has
> "baked" in the kernel for a couple years.
OK.
> In his defense, anyone sufficiently paranoid can already raise the
> priority of a WARN() into a panic via sysctl kernel.panic_on_warn (and
> kernel.panic_on_oops).
I think there are too many uses of WARN() for anyone sane to enable
that in production, whereas it'd have made sense to enable it for the
few security-related uses.
> > Also, WARN_ONCE possibly introduces a delay sufficient to realistically
> > win this race on the first try. If we choose to warn, we should do it
> > after having reverted the CR4 value, not before.
>
> Isn't cr4 CPU-local though?
Good point. I don't know. If CR4 is per hardware thread, then the race
would require an interrupt and would be much harder to win.
> Couldn't we turn off interrupts to stop the race?
This won't help. An attack would skip the code that disables interrupts
and land right on the MOV instruction.
Alexander
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