Re: [PATCH Part2 v5 00/45] Add AMD Secure Nested Paging (SEV-SNP) Hypervisor Support

Peter Gonda
2021-11-12T22:54:22Z

On Fri, Nov 12, 2021 at 2:43 PM Marc Orr <marcorr@google.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Nov 12, 2021 at 1:39 PM Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Nov 12, 2021, at 1:30 PM, Marc Orr wrote:
> > > On Fri, Nov 12, 2021 at 12:38 PM Sean Christopherson <seanjc@google.com> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> On Fri, Nov 12, 2021, Borislav Petkov wrote:
> > >> > On Fri, Nov 12, 2021 at 07:48:17PM +0000, Sean Christopherson wrote:
> > >> > > Yes, but IMO inducing a fault in the guest because of _host_ bug is wrong.
> > >> >
> > >> > What do you suggest instead?
> > >>
> > >> Let userspace decide what is mapped shared and what is mapped private. The kernel
> > >> and KVM provide the APIs/infrastructure to do the actual conversions in a thread-safe
> > >> fashion and also to enforce the current state, but userspace is the control plane.
> > >>
> > >> It would require non-trivial changes in userspace if there are multiple processes
> > >> accessing guest memory, e.g. Peter's networking daemon example, but it _is_ fully
> > >> solvable. The exit to userspace means all three components (guest, kernel,
> > >> and userspace) have full knowledge of what is shared and what is private. There
> > >> is zero ambiguity:
> > >>
> > >> - if userspace accesses guest private memory, it gets SIGSEGV or whatever.
> > >> - if kernel accesses guest private memory, it does BUG/panic/oops[*]
> > >> - if guest accesses memory with the incorrect C/SHARED-bit, it gets killed.
> > >>
> > >> This is the direction KVM TDX support is headed, though it's obviously still a WIP.
> > >>
> > >> And ideally, to avoid implicit conversions at any level, hardware vendors' ABIs
> > >> define that:
> > >>
> > >> a) All convertible memory, i.e. RAM, starts as private.
> > >> b) Conversions between private and shared must be done via explicit hypercall.
> > >>
> > >> Without (b), userspace and thus KVM have to treat guest accesses to the incorrect
> > >> type as implicit conversions.
> > >>
> > >> [*] Sadly, fully preventing kernel access to guest private is not possible with
> > >> TDX, especially if the direct map is left intact. But maybe in the future
> > >> TDX will signal a fault instead of poisoning memory and leaving a #MC mine.
> > >
> > > In this proposal, consider a guest driver instructing a device to DMA
> > > write a 1 GB memory buffer. A well-behaved guest driver will ensure
> > > that the entire 1 GB is marked shared. But what about a malicious or
> > > buggy guest? Let's assume a bad guest driver instructs the device to
> > > write guest private memory.
> > >
> > > So now, the virtual device, which might be implemented as some host
> > > side process, needs to (1) check and lock all 4k constituent RMP
> > > entries (so they're not converted to private while the DMA write is
> > > taking palce), (2) write the 1 GB buffer, and (3) unlock all 4 k
> > > constituent RMP entries? If I'm understanding this correctly, then the
> > > synchronization will be prohibitively expensive.
> >
> > Let's consider a very very similar scenario: consider a guest driver setting up a 1 GB DMA buffer. The virtual device, implemented as host process, needs to (1) map (and thus lock *or* be prepared for faults) in 1GB / 4k pages of guest memory (so they're not *freed* while the DMA write is taking place), (2) write the buffer, and (3) unlock all the pages. Or it can lock them at setup time and keep them locked for a long time if that's appropriate.
> >
> > Sure, the locking is expensive, but it's nonnegotiable. The RMP issue is just a special case of the more general issue that the host MUST NOT ACCESS GUEST MEMORY AFTER IT'S FREED.
>
> Good point.

Thanks for the responses Andy.

Having a way for userspace to lock pages as shared was an idea I just
proposed the simplest solution to start the conversation. So what we
could do here is change map to error if the selected region has
private pages, if the region is mapped we can then lock the pages
shared. Now processes mapping guest memory that are well behaved can
be safe from RMP violations. That seems like a reasonable solution for
allowing userspace to know if guest memory is accessible or not. Or do
you have other ideas to meet your other comment:

> SEV-SNP, TDX, and any reasonable software solution all require that the
> host know which pages are private and which pages are shared. Sure, the
> old SEV-ES Linux host implementation was very simple, but it's nasty and
> fundamentally can't support migration.