From: Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org>
To: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com>
Cc: Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org>, X86 ML <x86@kernel.org>,
LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
David Kaplan <David.Kaplan@amd.com>,
Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper3@citrix.com>,
David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>,
Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>, Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>
Subject: Re: Do we need to do anything about "dead µops?"
Date: Mon, 3 May 2021 18:31:21 -0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CALCETrVwFrpZU-6C=AVurVPk4ahV2yjqyhFeYbL_0OtBNJnZ=w@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20210503233010.x5lzpw4dq3gueg47@treble>
On Mon, May 3, 2021 at 4:30 PM Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> On Sat, May 01, 2021 at 09:26:33AM -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> > Hi all-
> >
> > The "I See Dead µops" paper that is all over the Internet right now is
> > interesting, and I think we should discuss the extent to which we
> > should do anything about it. I think there are two separate issues:
> >
> > First, should we (try to) flush the µop cache across privilege
> > boundaries? I suspect we could find ways to do this, but I don't
> > really see the point. A sufficiently capable attacker (i.e. one who
> > can execute their own code in the dangerous speculative window or one
> > who can find a capable enough string of gadgets) can put secrets into
> > the TLB, various cache levels, etc. The µop cache is a nice piece of
> > analysis, but I don't think it's qualitatively different from anything
> > else that we don't flush. Am I wrong?
>
> Wouldn't this type of gadget (half-v1 gadget + value-dependent-branch)
> would be much more likely to occur than a traditional Spectre v1
> (half-v1 gadget + value-addressed-load)?
I don't fully believe this. It's certainly the case that:
if (mispredicted as false)
return;
secret = some_secret();
if (secret == 42)
do_something();
will leak the fact that the secret is 42 into the µop cache, but it
will also leak it into the icache and lots of other things. I see
nothing new here. That being said, it's probably still worth
investigating the gadgets.
>
> Also, in section V.A., they identified 37 gadgets. Has anybody looked
> at those yet?
Not I.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2021-05-04 1:31 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 7+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2021-05-01 16:26 Do we need to do anything about "dead µops?" Andy Lutomirski
2021-05-01 17:35 ` Andrew Cooper
2021-05-03 23:30 ` Josh Poimboeuf
2021-05-04 1:31 ` Andy Lutomirski [this message]
2021-05-04 3:16 ` Josh Poimboeuf
2021-05-04 13:06 ` David Laight
2021-05-04 13:24 ` Josh Poimboeuf
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