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Message-ID: <CAFzhf4pJm_SLYd_tE69gspYvXm0VRvxhEi6c2JFL4cx_5=wwQg@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2021 22:06:13 +0000
From: Piotr Krysiuk <piotras@...il.com>
To: oss-security@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: [CVE-2020-27170] Protection against speculatively out-of-bounds loads
in the Linux kernel can be bypassed by unprivileged local users to leak
content of kernel memory
A gap in the Linux kernel mechanism to mitigate speculatively
out-of-bounds loads (Spectre mitigation) has been identified.
Unprivileged BPF programs running on affected systems can bypass
the protection and execute speculatively out-of-bounds loads from
any location within the kernel memory. This can be abused to extract
contents of kernel memory via side-channel.
The identified gap is that unprivileged BPF programs are allowed to
perform pointer arithmetic on particular pointer types not defining
ptr_limit. Pointer arithmetic on such pointer types is not protected
against out-of-bounds speculation.
I developed a PoC to demonstrate the issue using ctx pointers that
allows unprivileged local users to extract contents of kernel memory.
The PoC has been shared privately with <security@...nel.org> to assist
with fix development.
The patches are available from BPF subsystem public git repository. The
minimal fix is:
* bpf: Prohibit alu ops for pointer types not defining ptr_limit [
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/bpf/bpf.git/patch/?id=f232326f6966cf2a1d1db7bc917a4ce5f9f55f76
]
However it is recommended to apply the whole series as it includes
fix for another speculatively out-of-bounds vulnerability in BPF that
I reported at the same time and some additional hardening of the
affected code:
* bpf: Prohibit alu ops for pointer types not defining ptr_limit [
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/bpf/bpf.git/patch/?id=f232326f6966cf2a1d1db7bc917a4ce5f9f55f76
]
* bpf: Fix off-by-one for area size in creating mask to left [
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/bpf/bpf.git/patch/?id=10d2bb2e6b1d8c4576c56a748f697dbeb8388899
]
* bpf: Simplify alu_limit masking for pointer arithmetic [
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/bpf/bpf.git/patch/?id=b5871dca250cd391885218b99cc015aca1a51aea
]
* bpf: Add sanity check for upper ptr_limit [
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/bpf/bpf.git/patch/?id=1b1597e64e1a610c7a96710fc4717158e98a08b3
]
* bpf, selftests: Fix up some test_verifier cases for unprivileged [
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/bpf/bpf.git/patch/?id=0a13e3537ea67452d549a6a80da3776d6b7dedb3
]
Details of the other vulnerability to be provided in a separate email.
# Discoverer
Piotr Krysiuk <piotras@...il.com>
# References
CVE-2020-27170 (reserved via https://cveform.mitre.org/)
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