Re: [RFC] Restrict the untrusted devices, to bind to only a set of "whitelisted" drivers

[Rajat Jain <rajatja@google.com>]

Hi,

On Thu, May 14, 2020 at 12:13 PM Raj, Ashok <ashok.raj@intel.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Rajat,
>
>
> On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 02:26:18PM -0700, Rajat Jain wrote:
> > +ashok.raj@intel.com
> > +lalithambika.krishnakumar@intel.com
> >
> > On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 8:19 AM Bjorn Helgaas <helgaas@kernel.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > [+cc Christian (bolt maintainer), Alex, Joerg (IOMMU folks)]
> > >
> > > On Fri, May 01, 2020 at 04:07:10PM -0700, Rajat Jain wrote:
> > > > Hi,
> > > >
> > > > Currently, the PCI subsystem marks the PCI devices as "untrusted", if
> > > > the firmware asks it to:
> > > >
> > > > 617654aae50e ("PCI / ACPI: Identify untrusted PCI devices")
> > > > 9cb30a71acd4 ("PCI: OF: Support "external-facing" property")
> > > >
> > > > An "untrusted" device indicates a (likely external facing) device that
> > > > may be malicious, and can trigger DMA attacks on the system. It may
> > > > also try to exploit any vulnerabilities exposed by the driver, that
> > > > may allow it to read/write unintended addresses in the host (e.g. if
> > > > DMA buffers for the device, share memory pages with other driver data
> > > > structures or code etc).
> > > >
> > > > High Level proposal
> > > > ===============
> > > > Currently, the "untrusted" device property is used as a hint to enable
> > > > IOMMU restrictions (on Intel), disable ATS (on ARM) etc. We'd like to
> > > > go a step further, and allow the administrator to build a list of
> > > > whitelisted drivers for these "untrusted" devices. This whitelist of
> > > > drivers are the ones that he trusts enough to have little or no
> > > > vulnerabilities. (He may have built this list of whitelisted drivers
> > > > by a combination of code analysis of drivers, or by extensive testing
> > > > using PCIe fuzzing etc). We propose that the administrator be allowed
> > > > to specify this list of whitelisted drivers to the kernel, and the PCI
> > > > subsystem to impose this behavior:
> > > >
> > > > 1) The "untrusted" devices can bind to only "whitelisted drivers".
> > > > 2) The other devices (i.e. dev->untrusted=0) can bind to any driver.
> > > >
> > > > Of course this behavior is to be imposed only if such a whitelist is
> > > > provided by the administrator.
> > > >
> > > > Details
> > > > ======
> > > >
> > > > 1) A kernel argument ("pci.impose_driver_whitelisting") to enable
> > > > imposing of whitelisting by PCI subsystem.
> > > >
> > > > 2) Add a flag ("whitelisted") in struct pci_driver to indicate whether
> > > > the driver is whitelisted.
>
> I'm not sure if a driver certifying itself as secure is acceptable.
>
> Probably the pcie-component-authentication type mechanisms can establish
> proper root of trust. Othewise we are just hand waving and any method
> has its own gaps. You can probably say use the fuzzer etc, but that more
> falls in every adminstrator needs to run and qualify every device. Once you
> have a firmware update that component needs to be re-certified as well.

Yes and No. Yes, the whitelist may have to be re-evaluated for any
changes to kernel/drivers. But No, this will not be needed for any
device firmware updates.

>
>
> > > >
> > > > 3) Use the driver's "whitelisted" flag and the device's "untrusted"
> > > > flag, to make a decision about whether to bind or not in
> > > > pci_bus_match() or similar.
> > > >
> > > > 4) A mechanism to allow the administrator to specify the whitelist of
> > > > drivers. I think this needs more thought as there are multiple
> > > > options.
>
> A default could be we:
>
> * Trust nothing - need to have a challenge to establish ROT.
> * Trust RCiEP devices. These are integrated components and you can probably
>   think its not some FPGA plugged in trying to fake itself to defeat
>   security.
> * A sysadm supplied list of devices to trust.
>    - This could be maybe a RP and all devices below. Since they might be
>      all internal facing, the sysadm put those things together. Not plugged
>      in external facing ports.

Right, but the main problem that we want to solve (about the untrusted
devices) still remains unaddressed.

I believe that the approach taken by the paper you sent below, where
we're building a root of trust using device certificates, key pairs,
and challenges is definitely the right long term path. (Although I
feel there is still scope of some attacks there, but let's not go
there). But it requires the entire device ecosystem to come to an
agreement and then move to that, and is a big change (requiring change
in HW, FW and SW). That is still far away, and we need to think about
what we can do to deal with the current set of (external) devices that
we still want to support, and they can only plug in at untrusted
ports.

>
> > > >
> > > > a) Expose individual driver's "whitelisted" flag to userspace so a
> > > > boot script can whitelist that driver. There are questions that still
> > > > need answered though e.g. what to do about the devices that may have
> > > > already been enumerated and rejected by then? What to do with the
> > > > already bound devices, if the user changes a driver to remove it from
> > > > the whitelist. etc.
> > > >
> > > >       b) Provide a way to specify the whitelist via the kernel command
> > > > line. Accept a ("pci.whitelist") kernel parameter which is a comma
> > > > separated list of driver names (just like "module_blacklist"), and
> > > > then use it to initialize each driver's "whitelisted" flag as the
> > > > drivers are registered. Essentially this would mean that the whitelist
> > > > of devices cannot be changed after boot.
>
> As @Jean suggested in other thread, maybe sysfs attribute to flip after
> reboot is a good idea. One needs to be root, probably a good start. And
> you don't need to reboot to fix.
>
> > > >
> > > > To me (b) looks a better option but I think a future requirement would
> > > > be the ability to remove the drivers from the whitelist after boot
> > > > (adding drivers to whitelist at runtime may not be that critical IMO)
> > >
> > > We definitely have some problems in this area.
> > >
> > > - Thunderbolt has similar security issues, and "bolt"
> > >   (https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/bolt/bolt) provides a user interface
> > >   for authorizing devices.  Bolt is device-oriented (and specifically
> > >   for Thunderbolt), not driver-oriented, and I have no idea what
> > >   kernel interfaces it uses, but I wonder if there's some overlap with
> > >   this proposal.  It seems like both bolt and this proposal could
> > >   ultimately be part of the same user interface.
> >
> > Thanks for pointing to it! My proposal does indeed stem from enabling
> > of thunderbolt in our devices, and the PCIe tunneling (and thus the
> > additional threat from external devices) that it brings along. I took
> > a brief look at its documentation and it seems (Christian can correct
> > me) that it identifies devices with "UUID" and then uses that to drive
> > all its decisions. So essentially the problem it is trying to solve is
> > determining whether or not to enable PCIe tunnels based on the UUID of
> > the device. It seems to me that it assumes that the devices are
> > trustworthy (i.e. for eg. they will not spoof any other whitelisted
> > UUID). Christian, can you please help explain if bolt is capable of
> > dealing with malicious devices that can spoof other devices in order
> > to try and do bad things to the system?
> >
> > >
> > > - ATS allows PCIe endpoints to cache address translations so they
> > >   can generate DMAs with translated addresses (TLP Address Type 10b,
> > >   see PCIe r5.0, sec 10.2.1).  These DMAs can potentially bypass
> > >   the IOMMU.
> > >
> > >   AFAICT, amd_iommu always turns on ATS when possible.  It looks
> > >   like intel-iommu and arm-smmu-v3 turn it on except for "untrusted"
> > >   (external) devices.
> >
> > Correct. The point here is to turn on more restrictions on "untrusted" devices.
> >
> > >
> > >   There's nothing to prevent a malicious external device from
> > >   generating DMA with translated addresses even if we haven't
> > >   enabled ATS.

Reading this mail again, I think I now finally understand what Bjorn
was trying to say above, and I agree.

>
> @Bjorn: Intel Root ports behave as follows: at least for servers:
>
> Translation Requests: Are always non-posted. So RP will always respond with
> UR if IOMMU.TRANSLATION_ENABLE=0
>
> Translated Requests can be non-posted (reads), or Posted (Writes).
> If IOMMU.TE=0, RP will return UR for reads, and drop writes.
>

This is good info, thanks for confirming.

>
> *
> > >
> > >   I think all three IOMMUs have mechanisms to block TLPs with
> > >   translated addresses, but I can't tell whether they all *use*
> > >   them.
> >
> > Understood.
> >
> > >
> > > - ACS is an optional capability, but if implemented at all, downstream
> > >   ports (including root ports) are required to implement Translation
> > >   Blocking.  When enabled, this blocks upstream memory requests with
> > >   non-default AT fields.
> > >
> > >   Linux currently never enables Translation Blocking.  Maybe the IOMMU
> > >   protection is sufficient, but I think we should consider enabling TB
> > >   by default and disabling it only when required to enable ATS.  That
> > >   may catch malicious TLPs closer to the source and help when there is
> > >   no IOMMU at all.

Agree. Additionally for untrusted ports, we should probably never
disable TB and never allow to enable ATS.

> >
> > Understood and point taken. Note that enabling IOMMU protection (and
> > even disabling ATS and enabling TB) is not enough though. This isn't
> > to say that they shouldn't be done. Yes, they definitely need to be
> > done. As these can help ensure that a device can generate transactions
> > *only* to the memory areas (DMA buffers) that the driver has allotted
> > to it, [and thus all the security mitigations (IOMMU/ ACS/AT/TB) have
> > been configured so as to provide the device access for those areas].
>
> I'm not sure how much difference it makes if IOMMU's behave for translation
> request and requests with AT=1 accordingly to ensure safety. What
> additional protection does Translation blocking provides if we do not turn
> on ATS for those untrusted devices.

AFAICT nothing for Intel systems like you explained above. But maybe for others?

>
> >
> > What these settings can't help with, though, is a malicious device
> > trying to exploit certain driver vulnerabilities, that allow the
> > device to do bad things even while *restricting transactions within
> > the IOMMU allowed memory*. An attacker can do this by carefully
> > looking at drivers to identify and exploit driver vulnerabilities
> > (driver negligence). There is a lot of research work, but we for e.g.
> > are looking at this:
> > https://www.ndss-symposium.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/ndss2019_04A-1_Song_paper.pdf.
> > Here are the examples of driver vulnerabilities that it found, that
> > could be exploited even with the IOMMU/ACS and other restrictions in
> > place (please check case studies in sections F/G/H in the above paper)
> > since I may not be able to explain that well:
> >
> > * A driver could be double fetching the memory, causing it to do
> > different things than intended. E.g.
> > * A driver could be (negligently) passing some kernel addresses to the device.
> > * A driver could be using (for memory dereferencing, for e.g.) the
> > address/indices, given by the device, without enough validation.
> > * A driver may negligently be sharing the DMA memory with some other
> > driver data in the same PAGE. Since the IOMMU restrictions are PAGE
> > granular, this might give device access to that driver data.
> >
> > I think the points I am trying to make here are that
> >
> > 1) Since malicious devices can spoof other (potentially whitelisted)
> > devices, classifying devices into trusted and non-trusted is a good
> > step, but it is not enough. We do need to go one step further and
> > classify drivers into trusted/untrusted also, so as to (allow to)
> > impose more restrictions.
> >
> > 2) Drivers can be vulnerable / exploitable; and finding, fixing, and
> > introducing new exploits is a never ending cat and mouse game. But
> > everyone's appetite for risk is different depending on use case, and
> > thus administrators need a way to say, "I trust these drivers enough
> > that I consider them safe for my use, even on untrusted ports".
>
> with efforts like lockdown kernel, you ensure the entire kernel and drivers
> move to-gether.

Thanks for pointing. That would be helpful, but I'm not sure if it
will address the problems I identified above.

> My fear is if we don't keep this security properties small
> enough, the pure permutation and combinations would become a validation
> nightmare that by itself can't ensure what works and what doesn't.
>
> >
> > There is going to be a class of threat vectors that cannot be
> > addressed by IOMMU and ACS alone. And my proposal aims at those cases
> > specifically. It makes the case for an admin to actually look at the
> > various drivers and use various techniques available (PCIe fuzzing,
> > code analysis etc) to bless drivers. I once again suspect that I may
> > have failed to elaborate on the threat vectors clearly. Please let me
> > know if that is the case, and in that case, I'll probably ask our
> > security folks to chime in.
>
> When you say "Admin should actually look at the various driver" what does
> that mean?  I think we should give a simple security policy enforcement
> that is simple enough to keep up with. Until we get those device security
> enhancements are placed in practice.
>
> https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/io/pci-express/pcie-device-security-enhancements-spec.html

This I agree with, but until we get those enhanced secured devices in
place, we need to build a solution for existing devices that can be
plugged on untrusted ports.  Since currently there isn't a way for us
to verify device identity, any scheme that builds upon device provided
identification, falls apart as soon as we introduce "device spoofing"
in the threat model.

The proposal allows a Linux distribution/system designer to choose
which drivers he wants to allow on the untrusted ports. I think this
is a fair ask - given that there isn't any other solution at this time
to address the issues I pointed out.


Thanks!

Rajat

PS; A dimension that I think I'd like to mention again are the issues
arising out of "driver negligences" (like the vulnerabilities I
pointed above). These may not necessarily require a malicious device.
A driver whitelist also helps for that.

>
> Cheers,
> Ashok