Fun ahead -- speculation problems being patched in 5.10.105

Fun ahead -- speculation problems being patched in 5.10.105

[Pavel Machek]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1273 bytes --]

Hi!

It looks like 5.10.105 will be "fun" release. There's big series of
arm64 related speculation tweaks, including

 |61f85b56f 558c30 o: 5.10| arm64: Mitigate spectre style branch history side channels

And apparently there are some problems on x86-64 side, too:

 |d185aa3cb e9b601 .: 5.10| x86/speculation: Update link to AMD speculation whitepaper
 |edc29f23a eafd98 o: 5.10| x86/speculation: Warn about Spectre v2 LFENCE mitigation
 |67997c824 0de05d o: 5.10| x86/speculation: Warn about eIBRS + LFENCE + Unprivileged eBPF + SMT

We have seen worse stuff for a hardware bug mitigation before. Scary
thing here is that arm64 patches are queued against 5.10 but not 4.19
or earlier.

Let me reiterate again that using complex out-of-order CPU is a bad
idea if you care about security.

Let me reiterate that JITs such as eBPF are complex/dangerous and
especially unpriviledged eBPF is risky.

v |316f1dd5e 44a391 o: 5.10| x86/speculation: Include unprivileged eBPF status in Spectre v2 mitigation reporting

Best regards,
                                                                Pavel

-- 
DENX Software Engineering GmbH,      Managing Director: Wolfgang Denk
HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 195 bytes --]

Re: Fun ahead -- speculation problems being patched in 5.10.105

[Masami Ichikawa]

HI !

On Thu, Mar 10, 2022 at 6:37 AM Pavel Machek <pavel@denx.de> wrote:
>
> Hi!
>
> It looks like 5.10.105 will be "fun" release. There's big series of
> arm64 related speculation tweaks, including
>
>  |61f85b56f 558c30 o: 5.10| arm64: Mitigate spectre style branch history side channels
>
> And apparently there are some problems on x86-64 side, too:
>
>  |d185aa3cb e9b601 .: 5.10| x86/speculation: Update link to AMD speculation whitepaper
>  |edc29f23a eafd98 o: 5.10| x86/speculation: Warn about Spectre v2 LFENCE mitigation
>  |67997c824 0de05d o: 5.10| x86/speculation: Warn about eIBRS + LFENCE + Unprivileged eBPF + SMT
>
> We have seen worse stuff for a hardware bug mitigation before. Scary
> thing here is that arm64 patches are queued against 5.10 but not 4.19
> or earlier.
>
> Let me reiterate again that using complex out-of-order CPU is a bad
> idea if you care about security.
>
> Let me reiterate that JITs such as eBPF are complex/dangerous and
> especially unpriviledged eBPF is risky.
>

That's true. We saw lots of CVEs which recommended disabling unprivileged eBPF.
It is difficult to achieve both safety and usefulness :(

> v |316f1dd5e 44a391 o: 5.10| x86/speculation: Include unprivileged eBPF status in Spectre v2 mitigation reporting
>
> Best regards,
>                                                                 Pavel
>
> --
> DENX Software Engineering GmbH,      Managing Director: Wolfgang Denk
> HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany

Regards,
-- 
Masami Ichikawa
Cybertrust Japan Co., Ltd.

Email :masami.ichikawa@cybertrust.co.jp
          :masami.ichikawa@miraclelinux.com