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authorJosh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com>2019-07-08 11:52:26 -0500
committerThomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>2019-07-09 14:11:45 +0200
commita2059825986a1c8143fd6698774fa9d83733bb11 (patch)
treec98cd41c2ee9480b1f43f79fb46707bb15bf8b5a /Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt
parent18ec54fdd6d18d92025af097cd042a75cf0ea24c (diff)
downloadlwn-a2059825986a1c8143fd6698774fa9d83733bb11.tar.gz
lwn-a2059825986a1c8143fd6698774fa9d83733bb11.zip
x86/speculation: Enable Spectre v1 swapgs mitigations
The previous commit added macro calls in the entry code which mitigate the Spectre v1 swapgs issue if the X86_FEATURE_FENCE_SWAPGS_* features are enabled. Enable those features where applicable. The mitigations may be disabled with "nospectre_v1" or "mitigations=off". There are different features which can affect the risk of attack: - When FSGSBASE is enabled, unprivileged users are able to place any value in GS, using the wrgsbase instruction. This means they can write a GS value which points to any value in kernel space, which can be useful with the following gadget in an interrupt/exception/NMI handler: if (coming from user space) swapgs mov %gs:<percpu_offset>, %reg1 // dependent load or store based on the value of %reg // for example: mov %(reg1), %reg2 If an interrupt is coming from user space, and the entry code speculatively skips the swapgs (due to user branch mistraining), it may speculatively execute the GS-based load and a subsequent dependent load or store, exposing the kernel data to an L1 side channel leak. Note that, on Intel, a similar attack exists in the above gadget when coming from kernel space, if the swapgs gets speculatively executed to switch back to the user GS. On AMD, this variant isn't possible because swapgs is serializing with respect to future GS-based accesses. NOTE: The FSGSBASE patch set hasn't been merged yet, so the above case doesn't exist quite yet. - When FSGSBASE is disabled, the issue is mitigated somewhat because unprivileged users must use prctl(ARCH_SET_GS) to set GS, which restricts GS values to user space addresses only. That means the gadget would need an additional step, since the target kernel address needs to be read from user space first. Something like: if (coming from user space) swapgs mov %gs:<percpu_offset>, %reg1 mov (%reg1), %reg2 // dependent load or store based on the value of %reg2 // for example: mov %(reg2), %reg3 It's difficult to audit for this gadget in all the handlers, so while there are no known instances of it, it's entirely possible that it exists somewhere (or could be introduced in the future). Without tooling to analyze all such code paths, consider it vulnerable. Effects of SMAP on the !FSGSBASE case: - If SMAP is enabled, and the CPU reports RDCL_NO (i.e., not susceptible to Meltdown), the kernel is prevented from speculatively reading user space memory, even L1 cached values. This effectively disables the !FSGSBASE attack vector. - If SMAP is enabled, but the CPU *is* susceptible to Meltdown, SMAP still prevents the kernel from speculatively reading user space memory. But it does *not* prevent the kernel from reading the user value from L1, if it has already been cached. This is probably only a small hurdle for an attacker to overcome. Thanks to Dave Hansen for contributing the speculative_smap() function. Thanks to Andrew Cooper for providing the inside scoop on whether swapgs is serializing on AMD. [ tglx: Fixed the USER fence decision and polished the comment as suggested by Dave Hansen ] Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> Reviewed-by: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@intel.com>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt8
1 files changed, 4 insertions, 4 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt b/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt
index e6e806285703..01d7ad250e98 100644
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt
@@ -2587,7 +2587,7 @@
expose users to several CPU vulnerabilities.
Equivalent to: nopti [X86,PPC]
kpti=0 [ARM64]
- nospectre_v1 [PPC]
+ nospectre_v1 [X86,PPC]
nobp=0 [S390]
nospectre_v2 [X86,PPC,S390,ARM64]
spectre_v2_user=off [X86]
@@ -2936,9 +2936,9 @@
nosmt=force: Force disable SMT, cannot be undone
via the sysfs control file.
- nospectre_v1 [PPC] Disable mitigations for Spectre Variant 1 (bounds
- check bypass). With this option data leaks are possible
- in the system.
+ nospectre_v1 [X86,PPC] Disable mitigations for Spectre Variant 1
+ (bounds check bypass). With this option data leaks are
+ possible in the system.
nospectre_v2 [X86,PPC_FSL_BOOK3E,ARM64] Disable all mitigations for
the Spectre variant 2 (indirect branch prediction)