Re: [PATCH v4 0/4] x86/snp: Add kexec support

[Vitaly Kuznetsov <vkuznets@redhat.com>]

Alexander Graf <graf@amazon.com> writes:

> Hey Ashish,
>
> On 09.04.24 22:42, Ashish Kalra wrote:
>> From: Ashish Kalra <ashish.kalra@amd.com>
>>
>> The patchset adds bits and pieces to get kexec (and crashkernel) work on
>> SNP guest.
>
>
> With this patch set (and similar for the TDX one), you enable the 
> typical kdump case, which is great!
>
> However, if a user is running with direct kernel boot - which is very 
> typical in SEV-SNP setup, especially for Kata Containers and similar - 
> the initial launch measurement is a natural indicator of the target 
> environment. Kexec basically allows them to completely bypass that: You 
> would be able to run a completely different environment than the one you 
> measure through the launch digest. I'm not sure it's a good idea to even 
> allow that by default in CoCo environments - at least not if the kernel 
> is locked down.

Isn't it the same when we just allow loading kernel modules? I'm sure
you can also achieve a 'completely different environment' with that :-)
With SecureBoot / lockdown we normally require modules to pass signature
check, I guess we can employ the same mechanism for kexec. I.e. in
lockdown, we require signature check on the kexec-ed kernel. Also, it
may make sense to check initramfs too (with direct kernel boot it's also
part of launch measurements, right?) and there's UKI for that already).

Personally, I believe that if we simply forbid kexec for CoCo in
lockdown mode, the feature will become mostly useless in 'full stack'
(which boot through firmware) production envrironments.

-- 
Vitaly