Follow @Openwall on Twitter for new release announcements and other news
[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2017 10:41:42 +0100
From: Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@....com>
To: Ard Biesheuvel <ard.biesheuvel@...aro.org>,
	James Morse <james.morse@....com>
Cc: "linux-efi@...r.kernel.org" <linux-efi@...r.kernel.org>,
	kernel-hardening@...ts.openwall.com,
	Matt Fleming <matt@...eblueprint.co.uk>,
	Leif Lindholm <leif.lindholm@...aro.org>,
	Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>, Roy Franz <rfranz@...ium.com>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>,
	"linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org" <linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 4/4] ef/libstub: arm/arm64: randomize the base of the
 UEFI rt services region

On Fri, Apr 07, 2017 at 04:51:16PM +0100, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> On 7 April 2017 at 16:47, James Morse <james.morse@....com> wrote:
> > On 24/03/17 13:24, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> >> Update the allocation logic for the virtual mapping of the UEFI runtime
> >> services to start from a randomized base address if KASLR is in effect,
> >> and if the UEFI firmware exposes an implementation of EFI_RNG_PROTOCOL.
> >>
> >> This makes it more difficult to predict the location of exploitable
> >> data structures in the runtime UEFI firmware, which increases robustness
> >> against attacks. Note that these regions are only mapped during the
> >> time a runtime service call is in progress, and only on a single CPU
> >> at a time, bit give the lack of a downside, let's enable it nonetheless.
> >
> > With next-20170407 on Seattle Overdrive, I get an SError[0] on boot:

> > * Revert "ef/libstub/arm/arm64: Randomize the base of the UEFI rt services region"
> >
> > At which point the machine start booting to a prompt again, (its noisier than
> > usual but looks like double-printing).

> That is quite interesting, to be honest, because that patch should
> effectively be a NOP on systems that do not implement
> EFI_RNG_PROTOCOL.

FWIW, I'm also seeing a crash as a result of this patch, on a Juno R1
with an EFI_RNG_PROTOCOL implementation, with next-20170410 defconfig.
I'm using the Linaro 15.08 toolchain.

----
EFI stub: Booting Linux Kernel...
EFI stub: Using DTB from configuration table


WARNING: this system is using an unsafe pseudo-random implementation of
RngLib!



Synchronous Exception at 0x00000000F80FC7E8
----

If I replace the !nokaslr() in efi_entry() with false, my kernel boots.

If I replace !nokaslr() with true, it fails to boot, even with the call
to efi_get_random_bytes() replaced with status = EFI_ERROR.

The problem appears to be the use of TASK_SIZE, since on arm64 that's:

#define TASK_SIZE               (test_thread_flag(TIF_32BIT) ? \
                                TASK_SIZE_32 : TASK_SIZE_64)

... which would mean that the stub would be trying to dereference whatever it
found in sp_el0. Looking at objdump:

0000000000000160 <efi_entry>:
 ...
 4b4:   94000000        bl      0 <nokaslr>
 4b8:   35000280        cbnz    w0, 508 <efi_entry+0x3a8>
 4bc:   d5384100        mrs     x0, sp_el0
 4c0:   f9400004        ldr     x4, [x0]
...

So I think we should revert this for now.

Thanks,
Mark.

Powered by blists - more mailing lists

Confused about mailing lists and their use? Read about mailing lists on Wikipedia and check out these guidelines on proper formatting of your messages.