Explain why STIBP is needed with legacy IBRS as currently implemented
(KERNEL_IBRS) and why STIBP is not needed when enhanced IBRS is enabled.
Fixes: 7c693f54c8 ("x86/speculation: Add spectre_v2=ibrs option to support Kernel IBRS")
Signed-off-by: KP Singh <kpsingh@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov (AMD) <bp@alien8.de>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20230227060541.1939092-2-kpsingh@kernel.org
The AMD Zen4 core supports a new feature called Automatic IBRS.
It is a "set-and-forget" feature that means that, like Intel's Enhanced IBRS,
h/w manages its IBRS mitigation resources automatically across CPL transitions.
The feature is advertised by CPUID_Fn80000021_EAX bit 8 and is enabled by
setting MSR C000_0080 (EFER) bit 21.
Enable Automatic IBRS by default if the CPU feature is present. It typically
provides greater performance over the incumbent generic retpolines mitigation.
Reuse the SPECTRE_V2_EIBRS spectre_v2_mitigation enum. AMD Automatic IBRS and
Intel Enhanced IBRS have similar enablement. Add NO_EIBRS_PBRSB to
cpu_vuln_whitelist, since AMD Automatic IBRS isn't affected by PBRSB-eIBRS.
The kernel command line option spectre_v2=eibrs is used to select AMD Automatic
IBRS, if available.
Signed-off-by: Kim Phillips <kim.phillips@amd.com>
Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov (AMD) <bp@alien8.de>
Acked-by: Sean Christopherson <seanjc@google.com>
Acked-by: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20230124163319.2277355-8-kim.phillips@amd.com
commit 7c693f54c8 ("x86/speculation: Add spectre_v2=ibrs option to support Kernel IBRS")
adds the "ibrs " option in
Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt but omits it to
Documentation/admin-guide/hw-vuln/spectre.rst, add it.
Signed-off-by: Lin Yujun <linyujun809@huawei.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20220830123614.23007-1-linyujun809@huawei.com
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
tl;dr: The Enhanced IBRS mitigation for Spectre v2 does not work as
documented for RET instructions after VM exits. Mitigate it with a new
one-entry RSB stuffing mechanism and a new LFENCE.
== Background ==
Indirect Branch Restricted Speculation (IBRS) was designed to help
mitigate Branch Target Injection and Speculative Store Bypass, i.e.
Spectre, attacks. IBRS prevents software run in less privileged modes
from affecting branch prediction in more privileged modes. IBRS requires
the MSR to be written on every privilege level change.
To overcome some of the performance issues of IBRS, Enhanced IBRS was
introduced. eIBRS is an "always on" IBRS, in other words, just turn
it on once instead of writing the MSR on every privilege level change.
When eIBRS is enabled, more privileged modes should be protected from
less privileged modes, including protecting VMMs from guests.
== Problem ==
Here's a simplification of how guests are run on Linux' KVM:
void run_kvm_guest(void)
{
// Prepare to run guest
VMRESUME();
// Clean up after guest runs
}
The execution flow for that would look something like this to the
processor:
1. Host-side: call run_kvm_guest()
2. Host-side: VMRESUME
3. Guest runs, does "CALL guest_function"
4. VM exit, host runs again
5. Host might make some "cleanup" function calls
6. Host-side: RET from run_kvm_guest()
Now, when back on the host, there are a couple of possible scenarios of
post-guest activity the host needs to do before executing host code:
* on pre-eIBRS hardware (legacy IBRS, or nothing at all), the RSB is not
touched and Linux has to do a 32-entry stuffing.
* on eIBRS hardware, VM exit with IBRS enabled, or restoring the host
IBRS=1 shortly after VM exit, has a documented side effect of flushing
the RSB except in this PBRSB situation where the software needs to stuff
the last RSB entry "by hand".
IOW, with eIBRS supported, host RET instructions should no longer be
influenced by guest behavior after the host retires a single CALL
instruction.
However, if the RET instructions are "unbalanced" with CALLs after a VM
exit as is the RET in #6, it might speculatively use the address for the
instruction after the CALL in #3 as an RSB prediction. This is a problem
since the (untrusted) guest controls this address.
Balanced CALL/RET instruction pairs such as in step #5 are not affected.
== Solution ==
The PBRSB issue affects a wide variety of Intel processors which
support eIBRS. But not all of them need mitigation. Today,
X86_FEATURE_RSB_VMEXIT triggers an RSB filling sequence that mitigates
PBRSB. Systems setting RSB_VMEXIT need no further mitigation - i.e.,
eIBRS systems which enable legacy IBRS explicitly.
However, such systems (X86_FEATURE_IBRS_ENHANCED) do not set RSB_VMEXIT
and most of them need a new mitigation.
Therefore, introduce a new feature flag X86_FEATURE_RSB_VMEXIT_LITE
which triggers a lighter-weight PBRSB mitigation versus RSB_VMEXIT.
The lighter-weight mitigation performs a CALL instruction which is
immediately followed by a speculative execution barrier (INT3). This
steers speculative execution to the barrier -- just like a retpoline
-- which ensures that speculation can never reach an unbalanced RET.
Then, ensure this CALL is retired before continuing execution with an
LFENCE.
In other words, the window of exposure is opened at VM exit where RET
behavior is troublesome. While the window is open, force RSB predictions
sampling for RET targets to a dead end at the INT3. Close the window
with the LFENCE.
There is a subset of eIBRS systems which are not vulnerable to PBRSB.
Add these systems to the cpu_vuln_whitelist[] as NO_EIBRS_PBRSB.
Future systems that aren't vulnerable will set ARCH_CAP_PBRSB_NO.
[ bp: Massage, incorporate review comments from Andy Cooper. ]
Signed-off-by: Daniel Sneddon <daniel.sneddon@linux.intel.com>
Co-developed-by: Pawan Gupta <pawan.kumar.gupta@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Pawan Gupta <pawan.kumar.gupta@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov <bp@suse.de>
Update the link to the "Software Techniques for Managing Speculation
on AMD Processors" whitepaper.
Signed-off-by: Kim Phillips <kim.phillips@amd.com>
Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov <bp@suse.de>
Update the doc with the new fun.
[ bp: Massage commit message. ]
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@infradead.org>
Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov <bp@suse.de>
Reviewed-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
The config RANDOMIZE_SLAB does not exist, the authors probably intended to
refer to the config RANDOMIZE_BASE, which provides kernel address-space
randomization. They probably just confused SLAB with BASE (these two
four-letter words coincidentally share three common letters), as they also
point out the config SLAB_FREELIST_RANDOM as further randomization within
the same sentence.
Fix the reference of the config for kernel address-space randomization to
the config that provides that.
Fixes: 6e88559470 ("Documentation: Add section about CPU vulnerabilities for Spectre")
Signed-off-by: Lukas Bulwahn <lukas.bulwahn@gmail.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20211230171940.27558-1-lukas.bulwahn@gmail.com
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
This would need updating to make prctl be the new default, but it's
simpler to delete it and refer to the dup.
Signed-off-by: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20201105001406.13005-2-aarcange@redhat.com
Switch the kernel default of SSBD and STIBP to the ones with
CONFIG_SECCOMP=n (i.e. spec_store_bypass_disable=prctl
spectre_v2_user=prctl) even if CONFIG_SECCOMP=y.
Several motivations listed below:
- If SMT is enabled the seccomp jail can still attack the rest of the
system even with spectre_v2_user=seccomp by using MDS-HT (except on
XEON PHI where MDS can be tamed with SMT left enabled, but that's a
special case). Setting STIBP become a very expensive window dressing
after MDS-HT was discovered.
- The seccomp jail cannot attack the kernel with spectre-v2-HT
regardless (even if STIBP is not set), but with MDS-HT the seccomp
jail can attack the kernel too.
- With spec_store_bypass_disable=prctl the seccomp jail can attack the
other userland (guest or host mode) using spectre-v2-HT, but the
userland attack is already mitigated by both ASLR and pid namespaces
for host userland and through virt isolation with libkrun or
kata. (if something if somebody is worried about spectre-v2-HT it's
best to mount proc with hidepid=2,gid=proc on workstations where not
all apps may run under container runtimes, rather than slowing down
all seccomp jails, but the best is to add pid namespaces to the
seccomp jail). As opposed MDS-HT is not mitigated and the seccomp
jail can still attack all other host and guest userland if SMT is
enabled even with spec_store_bypass_disable=seccomp.
- If full security is required then MDS-HT must also be mitigated with
nosmt and then spectre_v2_user=prctl and spectre_v2_user=seccomp
would become identical.
- Setting spectre_v2_user=seccomp is overall lower priority than to
setting javascript.options.wasm false in about:config to protect
against remote wasm MDS-HT, instead of worrying about Spectre-v2-HT
and STIBP which again is already statistically well mitigated by
other means in userland and it's fully mitigated in kernel with
retpolines (unlike the wasm assist call with MDS-HT).
- SSBD is needed to prevent reading the JIT memory and the primary
user being the OpenJDK. However the primary user of SSBD wouldn't be
covered by spec_store_bypass_disable=seccomp because it doesn't use
seccomp and the primary user also explicitly declined to set
PR_SET_SPECULATION_CTRL+PR_SPEC_STORE_BYPASS despite it easily
could. In fact it would need to set it only when the sandboxing
mechanism is enabled for javaws applets, but it still declined it by
declaring security within the same user address space as an
untenable objective for their JIT, even in the sandboxing case where
performance would be a lesser concern (for the record: I kind of
disagree in not setting PR_SPEC_STORE_BYPASS in the sandbox case and
I prefer to run javaws through a wrapper that sets
PR_SPEC_STORE_BYPASS if I need). In turn it can be inferred that
even if the primary user of SSBD would use seccomp, they would
invoke it with SECCOMP_FILTER_FLAG_SPEC_ALLOW by now.
- runc/crun already set SECCOMP_FILTER_FLAG_SPEC_ALLOW by default, k8s
and podman have a default json seccomp allowlist that cannot be
slowed down, so for the #1 seccomp user this change is already a
noop.
- systemd/sshd or other apps that use seccomp, if they really need
STIBP or SSBD, they need to explicitly set the
PR_SET_SPECULATION_CTRL by now. The stibp/ssbd seccomp blind
catch-all approach was done probably initially with a wishful
thinking objective to pretend to have a peace of mind that it could
magically fix it all. That was wishful thinking before MDS-HT was
discovered, but after MDS-HT has been discovered it become just
window dressing.
- For qemu "-sandbox" seccomp jail it wouldn't make sense to set STIBP
or SSBD. SSBD doesn't help with KVM because there's no JIT (if it's
needed with TCG it should be an opt-in with
PR_SET_SPECULATION_CTRL+PR_SPEC_STORE_BYPASS and it shouldn't
slowdown KVM for nothing). For qemu+KVM STIBP would be even more
window dressing than it is for all other apps, because in the
qemu+KVM case there's not only the MDS attack to worry about with
SMT enabled. Even after disabling SMT, there's still a theoretical
spectre-v2 attack possible within the same thread context from guest
mode to host ring3 that the host kernel retpoline mitigation has no
theoretical chance to mitigate. On some kernels a
ibrs-always/ibrs-retpoline opt-in model is provided that will
enabled IBRS in the qemu host ring3 userland which fixes this
theoretical concern. Only after enabling IBRS in the host userland
it would then make sense to proceed and worry about STIBP and an
attack on the other host userland, but then again SMT would need to
be disabled for full security anyway, so that would render STIBP
again a noop.
- last but not the least: the lack of "spec_store_bypass_disable=prctl
spectre_v2_user=prctl" means the moment a guest boots and
sshd/systemd runs, the guest kernel will write to SPEC_CTRL MSR
which will make the guest vmexit forever slower, forcing KVM to
issue a very slow rdmsr instruction at every vmexit. So the end
result is that SPEC_CTRL MSR is only available in GCE. Most other
public cloud providers don't expose SPEC_CTRL, which means that not
only STIBP/SSBD isn't available, but IBPB isn't available either
(which would cause no overhead to the guest or the hypervisor
because it's write only and requires no reading during vmexit). So
the current default already net loss in security (missing IBPB)
which means most public cloud providers cannot achieve a fully
secure guest with nosmt (and nosmt is enough to fully mitigate
MDS-HT). It also means GCE and is unfairly penalized in performance
because it provides the option to enable full security in the guest
as an opt-in (i.e. nosmt and IBPB). So this change will allow all
cloud providers to expose SPEC_CTRL without incurring into any
hypervisor slowdown and at the same time it will remove the unfair
penalization of GCE performance for doing the right thing and it'll
allow to get full security with nosmt with IBPB being available (and
STIBP becoming meaningless).
Example to put things in prospective: the STIBP enabled in seccomp has
never been about protecting apps using seccomp like sshd from an
attack from a malicious userland, but to the contrary it has always
been about protecting the system from an attack from sshd, after a
successful remote network exploit against sshd. In fact initially it
wasn't obvious STIBP would work both ways (STIBP was about preventing
the task that runs with STIBP to be attacked with spectre-v2-HT, but
accidentally in the STIBP case it also prevents the attack in the
other direction). In the hypothetical case that sshd has been remotely
exploited the last concern should be STIBP being set, because it'll be
still possible to obtain info even from the kernel by using MDS if
nosmt wasn't set (and if it was set, STIBP is a noop in the first
place). As opposed kernel cannot leak anything with spectre-v2 HT
because of retpolines and the userland is mitigated by ASLR already
and ideally PID namespaces too. If something it'd be worth checking if
sshd run the seccomp thread under pid namespaces too if available in
the running kernel. SSBD also would be a noop for sshd, since sshd
uses no JIT. If sshd prefers to keep doing the STIBP window dressing
exercise, it still can even after this change of defaults by opting-in
with PR_SPEC_INDIRECT_BRANCH.
Ultimately setting SSBD and STIBP by default for all seccomp jails is
a bad sweet spot and bad default with more cons than pros that end up
reducing security in the public cloud (by giving an huge incentive to
not expose SPEC_CTRL which would be needed to get full security with
IBPB after setting nosmt in the guest) and by excessively hurting
performance to more secure apps using seccomp that end up having to
opt out with SECCOMP_FILTER_FLAG_SPEC_ALLOW.
The following is the verified result of the new default with SMT
enabled:
(gdb) print spectre_v2_user_stibp
$1 = SPECTRE_V2_USER_PRCTL
(gdb) print spectre_v2_user_ibpb
$2 = SPECTRE_V2_USER_PRCTL
(gdb) print ssb_mode
$3 = SPEC_STORE_BYPASS_PRCTL
Signed-off-by: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20201104235054.5678-1-aarcange@redhat.com
Acked-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/AAA2EF2C-293D-4D5B-BFA6-FF655105CD84@redhat.com
Acked-by: Waiman Long <longman@redhat.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/c0722838-06f7-da6b-138f-e0f26362f16a@redhat.com
Add documentation to the Spectre document about the new swapgs variant of
Spectre v1.
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Add documentation for Spectre vulnerability and the mitigation mechanisms:
- Explain the problem and risks
- Document the mitigation mechanisms
- Document the command line controls
- Document the sysfs files
Co-developed-by: Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com>
Co-developed-by: Tim Chen <tim.c.chen@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Tim Chen <tim.c.chen@linux.intel.com>
Reviewed-by: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org>
Reviewed-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
