Re: [PATCH v5 11/17] arm64: docs: document pointer authentication

[Kristina Martsenko <kristina.martsenko@arm.com>]

On 19/10/2018 12:35, Catalin Marinas wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 16, 2018 at 05:14:39PM +0100, Kristina Martsenko wrote:
>> On 05/10/2018 10:04, Ramana Radhakrishnan wrote:
>>> On 05/10/2018 09:47, Kristina Martsenko wrote:
>>>> +Virtualization
>>>> +--------------
>>>> +
>>>> +Pointer authentication is not currently supported in KVM guests. KVM
>>>> +will mask the feature bits from ID_AA64ISAR1_EL1, and attempted use of
>>>> +the feature will result in an UNDEFINED exception being injected into
>>>> +the guest.
>>>
>>> However applications using instructions from the hint space will
>>> continue to work albeit without any protection (as they would just be
>>> nops) ?
>>
>> Mostly, yes. If the guest leaves SCTLR_EL1.EnIA unset (and
>> EnIB/EnDA/EnDB), then PAC* and AUT* instructions in the HINT space will
>> execute as NOPs. If the guest sets EnIA, then PAC*/AUT* instructions
>> will trap and KVM will inject an "Unknown reason" exception into the
>> guest (which will cause a Linux guest to send a SIGILL to the application).
> 
> I think that part is fine. If KVM (a fairly recent version with CPUID
> sanitisation) does not enable ptr auth, the CPUID should not advertise
> this feature either so the guest kernel should not enable it. For the
> above instructions in the HINT space, they will just be NOPs. If the
> guest kernel enables the feature regardless of the CPUID information, it
> deserves to get an "Unknown reason" exception.
> 
>> In the latter case we could instead pretend the instruction was a NOP
>> and not inject an exception, but trapping twice per every function would
>> probably be terrible for performance. The guest shouldn't be setting
>> EnIA anyway if ID_AA64ISAR1_EL1 reports that pointer authentication is
>> not present (because KVM has hidden it).
> 
> I don't think we should. The SCTLR_EL1 bits are RES0 unless you know
> that the feature is present via CPUID.
> 
>> The other special case is the XPACLRI instruction, which is also in the
>> HINT space. Currently it will trap and KVM will inject an exception into
>> the guest. We should probably change this to NOP instead, as that's what
>> applications will expect. Unfortunately there is no EnIA-like control to
>> make it NOP.
> 
> Very good catch. Basically if EL2 doesn't know about ptr auth (older
> distro), EL1 may or may not know but leaves SCTLR_EL1 disabled (based on
> CPUID), the default HCR_EL2 is to trap (I'm ignoring EL3 as that's like
> to have ptr auth enabled, being built for the specific HW). So a user
> app considering XPACLRI a NOP (or inoffensive) will get a SIGILL
> (injected by the guest kernel following the injection of "Unknown
> reason" exception by KVM).
> 
> Ramana, is XPACLRI commonly generated by gcc and expects it to be a NOP?
> Could we restrict it to only being used at run-time if the corresponding
> HWCAP is set? This means redefining this instruction as no longer in the
> NOP space.

I think an alternative solution is to just disable trapping of pointer
auth instructions in KVM. This will mean that the instructions will
behave the same in the guest as they do in the host. HINT-space
instructions (including XPACLRI) will behave as NOPs (or perform their
function, if enabled by the guest), and will not trap.

A side effect of disabling trapping is that keys may effectively leak
from one guest to another, since one guest may set a key and another
guest may use an instruction that uses that key. But this can be fixed
by zeroing the keys every time we enter a guest. We can additionally
trap key accesses (which is separate from instruction trapping), to have
guests fail more reliably and avoid restoring host keys on guest exit.

Things still won't work well on big.LITTLE systems with mismatched
pointer auth support between CPUs, but as Marc pointed out in the other
email, we can just disable KVM on such systems when we detect a pointer
auth mismatch.

If we want current stable kernels to support guests that use HINT-space
pointer auth instructions, we'll need to backport the above changes to
stable kernels as well.

Even if we restricted userspace to only use XPACLRI if the HWCAP is set,
current stable kernels would still not be able to handle the HINT-space
PAC/AUT instructions that GCC generates, if the guest is pointer auth
aware. None of the stable kernels have the CPUID sanitisation patches,
so the guest would enable pointer auth, which would cause the PAC/AUT
instructions to trap.

>> One option is for KVM to pretend the instruction was a NOP and return to
>> the guest. But if XPACLRI gets executed frequently, then the constant
>> trapping might hurt performance. I don't know how frequently it might
>> get used, as I don't know of any applications currently using it. From
>> what I understand, it may be used by userspace stack unwinders.
>>
>> (Also worth noting - as far as I can tell there is no easy way for KVM
>> to know which pointer authentication instruction caused the trap, so we
>> may have to do something unusual like use "at s12e1r" to read guest
>> memory and check for XPACLRI.)
> 
> Indeed, it's not an easy fix. As discussed (in the office), we can't
> even guarantee that the guest stage 1 translation is stable and points
> to the actual XPACLRI instruction.
> 
>> The other option is to turn off trapping entirely. However then on a
>> big.LITTLE system with mismatched pointer authentication support
>> instructions will work intermittently on some CPUs but not others.
> 
> That's another case but let's assume we never see such configurations ;).

Kristina