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Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2020 08:18:13 -0700
From: Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>
To: Jann Horn <jannh@...gle.com>
Cc: Kristen Carlson Accardi <kristen@...ux.intel.com>,
Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>, Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>,
Arjan van de Ven <arjan@...ux.intel.com>,
the arch/x86 maintainers <x86@...nel.org>,
kernel list <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
Kernel Hardening <kernel-hardening@...ts.openwall.com>,
Rick Edgecombe <rick.p.edgecombe@...el.com>,
Tony Luck <tony.luck@...el.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 09/10] kallsyms: Hide layout
On Wed, Jun 24, 2020 at 12:21:16PM +0200, Jann Horn wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 23, 2020 at 7:26 PM Kristen Carlson Accardi
> <kristen@...ux.intel.com> wrote:
> > This patch makes /proc/kallsyms display alphabetically by symbol
> > name rather than sorted by address in order to hide the newly
> > randomized address layout.
> [...]
> > +static int sorted_show(struct seq_file *m, void *p)
> > +{
> > + struct list_head *list = m->private;
> > + struct kallsyms_iter_list *iter;
> > + int rc;
> > +
> > + if (list_empty(list))
> > + return 0;
> > +
> > + iter = list_first_entry(list, struct kallsyms_iter_list, next);
> > +
> > + m->private = iter;
> > + rc = s_show(m, p);
> > + m->private = list;
> > +
> > + list_del(&iter->next);
> > + kfree(iter);
>
> Does anything like this kfree() happen if someone only reads the start
> of kallsyms and then closes the file? IOW, does "while true; do head
> -n1 /proc/kallsyms; done" leak memory?
Oop, nice catch. It seems the list would need to be walked on s_stop.
>
> > + return rc;
> > +}
> [...]
> > +static int kallsyms_list_cmp(void *priv, struct list_head *a,
> > + struct list_head *b)
> > +{
> > + struct kallsyms_iter_list *iter_a, *iter_b;
> > +
> > + iter_a = list_entry(a, struct kallsyms_iter_list, next);
> > + iter_b = list_entry(b, struct kallsyms_iter_list, next);
> > +
> > + return strcmp(iter_a->iter.name, iter_b->iter.name);
> > +}
>
> This sorts only by name, but kallsyms prints more information (module
> names and types). This means that if there are elements whose names
> are the same, but whose module names or types are different, then some
> amount of information will still be leaked by the ordering of elements
> with the same name. In practice, since list_sort() is stable, this
> means you can see the ordering of many modules, and you can see the
> ordering of symbols with same name but different visibility (e.g. "t
> user_read" from security/selinux/ss/policydb.c vs "T user_read" from
> security/keys/user_defined.c, and a couple other similar cases).
i.e. sub-sort by visibility?
>
> [...]
> > +#if defined(CONFIG_FG_KASLR)
> > +/*
> > + * When fine grained kaslr is enabled, we need to
> > + * print out the symbols sorted by name rather than by
> > + * by address, because this reveals the randomization order.
> > + */
> > +static int kallsyms_open(struct inode *inode, struct file *file)
> > +{
> > + int ret;
> > + struct list_head *list;
> > +
> > + list = __seq_open_private(file, &kallsyms_sorted_op, sizeof(*list));
> > + if (!list)
> > + return -ENOMEM;
> > +
> > + INIT_LIST_HEAD(list);
> > +
> > + ret = kallsyms_on_each_symbol(get_all_symbol_name, list);
> > + if (ret != 0)
> > + return ret;
> > +
> > + list_sort(NULL, list, kallsyms_list_cmp);
>
> This permits running an algorithm (essentially mergesort) with
> secret-dependent branches and memory addresses on essentially secret
> data, triggerable and arbitrarily repeatable (although with partly
> different addresses on each run) by the attacker, and probably a
> fairly low throughput (comparisons go through indirect function calls,
> which are slowed down by retpolines, and linked list iteration implies
> slow pointer chases). Those are fairly favorable conditions for
> typical side-channel attacks.
>
> Do you have estimates of how hard it would be to leverage such side
> channels to recover function ordering (both on old hardware that only
> has microcode fixes for Spectre and such, and on newer hardware with
> enhanced IBRS and such)?
I wonder, instead, if sorting should be just done once per module
load/unload? That would make the performance and memory management
easier too.
--
Kees Cook
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