Re: [PATCH v26 0/9] Control-flow Enforcement: Indirect Branch Tracking

From: "H.J. Lu" <hjl.tools@gmail.com>
To: "Yu, Yu-cheng" <yu-cheng.yu@intel.com>
Cc: David Laight <David.Laight@aculab.com>,
	Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org>,
	"x86@kernel.org" <x86@kernel.org>,
	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>,
	"linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	"linux-doc@vger.kernel.org" <linux-doc@vger.kernel.org>,
	"linux-mm@kvack.org" <linux-mm@kvack.org>,
	"linux-arch@vger.kernel.org" <linux-arch@vger.kernel.org>,
	"linux-api@vger.kernel.org" <linux-api@vger.kernel.org>,
	Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>,
	Balbir Singh <bsingharora@gmail.com>,
	Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>,
	Cyrill Gorcunov <gorcunov@gmail.com>,
	Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>,
	Eugene Syromiatnikov <esyr@redhat.com>,
	Florian Weimer <fweimer@redhat.com>, Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>,
	Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>,
	Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>,
	Mike Kravetz <mike.kravetz@oracle.com>,
	Nadav Amit <nadav.amit@gmail.com>,
	Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>, Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>,
	Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>,
	Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org>,
	"Ravi V. Shankar" <ravi.v.shankar@intel.com>,
	Vedvyas Shanbhogue <vedvyas.shanbhogue@intel.com>,
	Dave Martin <Dave.Martin@arm.com>,
	Weijiang Yang <weijiang.yang@intel.com>,
	Pengfei Xu <pengfei.xu@intel.com>,
	Haitao Huang <haitao.huang@intel.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v26 0/9] Control-flow Enforcement: Indirect Branch Tracking
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2021 10:15:10 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAMe9rOqhiBOvv4YhdHwu6Gwq+=rZ=t02Q+vQtWxqiB-uXWi2vw@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <7d857e5d-e3d3-1182-5712-813abf48ccba@intel.com>

On Wed, Apr 28, 2021 at 9:25 AM Yu, Yu-cheng <yu-cheng.yu@intel.com> wrote:
>
> On 4/28/2021 8:33 AM, David Laight wrote:
> > From: Andy Lutomirski
> >> Sent: 28 April 2021 16:15
> >>
> >> On Wed, Apr 28, 2021 at 7:57 AM H.J. Lu <hjl.tools@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> On Wed, Apr 28, 2021 at 7:52 AM Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> On Wed, Apr 28, 2021 at 7:48 AM David Laight <David.Laight@aculab.com> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> From: Yu-cheng Yu
> >>>>>> Sent: 27 April 2021 21:47
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Control-flow Enforcement (CET) is a new Intel processor feature that blocks
> >>>>>> return/jump-oriented programming attacks.  Details are in "Intel 64 and
> >>>>>> IA-32 Architectures Software Developer's Manual" [1].
> >>>>> ...
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Does this feature require that 'binary blobs' for out of tree drivers
> >>>>> be compiled by a version of gcc that adds the ENDBRA instructions?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> If enabled for userspace, what happens if an old .so is dynamically
> >>>>> loaded?
> >>>
> >>> CET will be disabled by ld.so in this case.
> >>
> >> What if a program starts a thread and then dlopens a legacy .so?
> >
> > Or has shadow stack enabled and opens a .so that uses retpolines?
> >
>
> When shadow stack is enabled, retpolines are not necessary.  I don't
> know if glibc has been updated for detection of this case.  H.J.?
>
> >>>>> Or do all userspace programs and libraries have to have been compiled
> >>>>> with the ENDBRA instructions?
> >>>
> >>> Correct.  ld and ld.so check this.
> >>>
> >>>> If you believe that the userspace tooling for the legacy IBT table
> >>>> actually works, then it should just work.  Yu-cheng, etc: how well
> >>>> tested is it?
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> Legacy IBT bitmap isn't unused since it doesn't cover legacy codes
> >>> generated by legacy JITs.
> >>>
> >>
> >> How does ld.so decide whether a legacy JIT is in use?
> >
> > What if your malware just precedes its 'jump into the middle of a function'
> > with a %ds segment override?
> >
>
> Do you mean far jump?  It is not tracked by ibt, which tracks near
> indirect jump.  The details can be found in Intel SDM.
>
> > I may have a real problem here.
> > We currently release program/library binaries that run on Linux
> > distributions that go back as far as RHEL6 (2.6.32 kernel era).
> > To do this everything is compiled on a userspace of the same vintage.
> > I'm not at all sure a new enough gcc to generate the ENDBR64 instructions
> > will run on the relevant system - and may barf on the system headers
> > even if we got it to run.
> > I really don't want to have to build multiple copies of everything.
>
> This is likely OK.  We have tested many combinations.  Should you run
> into any issue, please let glibc people know.
>

If you have a Tiger Lake laptop, you can install the CET kernel on
Fedora 34 or Ubuntu 20.10/21.04.

-- 
H.J.