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12abeb81c8
Add support for virtualizing Control-flow Enforcement Technology (CET) on
Intel (Shadow Stacks and Indirect Branch Tracking) and AMD (Shadow Stacks).
CET is comprised of two distinct features, Shadow Stacks (SHSTK) and Indirect
Branch Tracking (IBT), that can be utilized by software to help provide
Control-flow integrity (CFI). SHSTK defends against backward-edge attacks
(a.k.a. Return-oriented programming (ROP)), while IBT defends against
forward-edge attacks (a.k.a. similarly CALL/JMP-oriented programming (COP/JOP)).
Attackers commonly use ROP and COP/JOP methodologies to redirect the control-
flow to unauthorized targets in order to execute small snippets of code,
a.k.a. gadgets, of the attackers choice. By chaining together several gadgets,
an attacker can perform arbitrary operations and circumvent the system's
defenses.
SHSTK defends against backward-edge attacks, which execute gadgets by modifying
the stack to branch to the attacker's target via RET, by providing a second
stack that is used exclusively to track control transfer operations. The
shadow stack is separate from the data/normal stack, and can be enabled
independently in user and kernel mode.
When SHSTK is is enabled, CALL instructions push the return address on both the
data and shadow stack. RET then pops the return address from both stacks and
compares the addresses. If the return addresses from the two stacks do not
match, the CPU generates a Control Protection (#CP) exception.
IBT defends against backward-edge attacks, which branch to gadgets by executing
indirect CALL and JMP instructions with attacker controlled register or memory
state, by requiring the target of indirect branches to start with a special
marker instruction, ENDBRANCH. If an indirect branch is executed and the next
instruction is not an ENDBRANCH, the CPU generates a #CP. Note, ENDBRANCH
behaves as a NOP if IBT is disabled or unsupported.
From a virtualization perspective, CET presents several problems. While SHSTK
and IBT have two layers of enabling, a global control in the form of a CR4 bit,
and a per-feature control in user and kernel (supervisor) MSRs (U_CET and S_CET
respectively), the {S,U}_CET MSRs can be context switched via XSAVES/XRSTORS.
Practically speaking, intercepting and emulating XSAVES/XRSTORS is not a viable
option due to complexity, and outright disallowing use of XSTATE to context
switch SHSTK/IBT state would render the features unusable to most guests.
To limit the overall complexity without sacrificing performance or usability,
simply ignore the potential virtualization hole, but ensure that all paths in
KVM treat SHSTK/IBT as usable by the guest if the feature is supported in
hardware, and the guest has access to at least one of SHSTK or IBT. I.e. allow
userspace to advertise one of SHSTK or IBT if both are supported in hardware,
even though doing so would allow a misbehaving guest to use the unadvertised
feature.
Fully emulating SHSTK and IBT would also require significant complexity, e.g.
to track and update branch state for IBT, and shadow stack state for SHSTK.
Given that emulating large swaths of the guest code stream isn't necessary on
modern CPUs, punt on emulating instructions that meaningful impact or consume
SHSTK or IBT. However, instead of doing nothing, explicitly reject emulation
of such instructions so that KVM's emulator can't be abused to circumvent CET.
Disable support for SHSTK and IBT if KVM is configured such that emulation of
arbitrary guest instructions may be required, specifically if Unrestricted
Guest (Intel only) is disabled, or if KVM will emulate a guest.MAXPHYADDR that
is smaller than host.MAXPHYADDR.
Lastly disable SHSTK support if shadow paging is enabled, as the protections
for the shadow stack are novel (shadow stacks require Writable=0,Dirty=1, so
that they can't be directly modified by software), i.e. would require
non-trivial support in the Shadow MMU.
Note, AMD CPUs currently only support SHSTK. Explicitly disable IBT support
so that KVM doesn't over-advertise if AMD CPUs add IBT, and virtualizing IBT
in SVM requires KVM modifications.
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Merge tag 'kvm-x86-cet-6.18' of https://github.com/kvm-x86/linux into HEAD
KVM x86 CET virtualization support for 6.18
Add support for virtualizing Control-flow Enforcement Technology (CET) on
Intel (Shadow Stacks and Indirect Branch Tracking) and AMD (Shadow Stacks).
CET is comprised of two distinct features, Shadow Stacks (SHSTK) and Indirect
Branch Tracking (IBT), that can be utilized by software to help provide
Control-flow integrity (CFI). SHSTK defends against backward-edge attacks
(a.k.a. Return-oriented programming (ROP)), while IBT defends against
forward-edge attacks (a.k.a. similarly CALL/JMP-oriented programming (COP/JOP)).
Attackers commonly use ROP and COP/JOP methodologies to redirect the control-
flow to unauthorized targets in order to execute small snippets of code,
a.k.a. gadgets, of the attackers choice. By chaining together several gadgets,
an attacker can perform arbitrary operations and circumvent the system's
defenses.
SHSTK defends against backward-edge attacks, which execute gadgets by modifying
the stack to branch to the attacker's target via RET, by providing a second
stack that is used exclusively to track control transfer operations. The
shadow stack is separate from the data/normal stack, and can be enabled
independently in user and kernel mode.
When SHSTK is is enabled, CALL instructions push the return address on both the
data and shadow stack. RET then pops the return address from both stacks and
compares the addresses. If the return addresses from the two stacks do not
match, the CPU generates a Control Protection (#CP) exception.
IBT defends against backward-edge attacks, which branch to gadgets by executing
indirect CALL and JMP instructions with attacker controlled register or memory
state, by requiring the target of indirect branches to start with a special
marker instruction, ENDBRANCH. If an indirect branch is executed and the next
instruction is not an ENDBRANCH, the CPU generates a #CP. Note, ENDBRANCH
behaves as a NOP if IBT is disabled or unsupported.
From a virtualization perspective, CET presents several problems. While SHSTK
and IBT have two layers of enabling, a global control in the form of a CR4 bit,
and a per-feature control in user and kernel (supervisor) MSRs (U_CET and S_CET
respectively), the {S,U}_CET MSRs can be context switched via XSAVES/XRSTORS.
Practically speaking, intercepting and emulating XSAVES/XRSTORS is not a viable
option due to complexity, and outright disallowing use of XSTATE to context
switch SHSTK/IBT state would render the features unusable to most guests.
To limit the overall complexity without sacrificing performance or usability,
simply ignore the potential virtualization hole, but ensure that all paths in
KVM treat SHSTK/IBT as usable by the guest if the feature is supported in
hardware, and the guest has access to at least one of SHSTK or IBT. I.e. allow
userspace to advertise one of SHSTK or IBT if both are supported in hardware,
even though doing so would allow a misbehaving guest to use the unadvertised
feature.
Fully emulating SHSTK and IBT would also require significant complexity, e.g.
to track and update branch state for IBT, and shadow stack state for SHSTK.
Given that emulating large swaths of the guest code stream isn't necessary on
modern CPUs, punt on emulating instructions that meaningful impact or consume
SHSTK or IBT. However, instead of doing nothing, explicitly reject emulation
of such instructions so that KVM's emulator can't be abused to circumvent CET.
Disable support for SHSTK and IBT if KVM is configured such that emulation of
arbitrary guest instructions may be required, specifically if Unrestricted
Guest (Intel only) is disabled, or if KVM will emulate a guest.MAXPHYADDR that
is smaller than host.MAXPHYADDR.
Lastly disable SHSTK support if shadow paging is enabled, as the protections
for the shadow stack are novel (shadow stacks require Writable=0,Dirty=1, so
that they can't be directly modified by software), i.e. would require
non-trivial support in the Shadow MMU.
Note, AMD CPUs currently only support SHSTK. Explicitly disable IBT support
so that KVM doesn't over-advertise if AMD CPUs add IBT, and virtualizing IBT
in SVM requires KVM modifications.
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Linux kernel
============
There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.
In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``. The formatted documentation can also be read online at:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/
There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the reStructuredText markup notation.
Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.