Re: [PATCH v2] docs: security: Confidential computing intro and threat model for x86 virtualization

[Sean Christopherson <seanjc@google.com>]

On Fri, Jun 16, 2023, Dmytro Maluka wrote:
> On 6/14/23 16:15, Sean Christopherson wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 14, 2023, Elena Reshetova wrote:
> >> Not having a network access requirement doesn’t implicitly invalidate the 
> >> separation guarantees between the host and guest, it just makes it easier
> >> since you have one interface less between the host and guest.
> > 
> > My point is that if the protected guest doesn't need any I/O beyond the hardware
> > device that it accesses, then the threat model is different because many of the
> > new/novel attack surfaces that come with the TDX/SNP threat model don't exist.
> > E.g. the hardening that people want to do for VirtIO drivers may not be at all
> > relevant to pKVM.

...

> But I think I get what you mean: there is no data transfer whereby the
> host is not an endpoint but an intermediary between the guest and some
> device. In simple words, things like virtio-net or virtio-blk are out of
> scope. Yes, I think that's correct for pKVM-on-x86 use cases (and I
> suppose it is correct for pKVM-on-ARM use cases as well). I guess it
> means that "guest data attacks" may not be relevant to pKVM, and perhaps
> this makes its threat model substantially different from cloud use
> cases.

Yes.  

> >>>> +This new type of adversary may be viewed as a more powerful type
> >>>> +of external attacker, as it resides locally on the same physical machine
> >>>> +-in contrast to a remote network attacker- and has control over the guest
> >>>> +kernel communication with most of the HW::
> >>>
> >>> IIUC, this last statement doesn't hold true for the pKVM on x86 use case, which
> >>> specifically aims to give a "guest" exclusive access to hardware resources.
> >>
> >> Does it hold for *all* HW resources? If yes, indeed this would make pKVM on
> >> x86 considerably different.
> > 
> > Heh, the original says "most", so it doesn't have to hold for all hardware resources,
> > just a simple majority.
> 
> Again, pedantic mode on, I find it difficult to agree with the wording
> that the guest owns "most of" the HW resources it uses. It controls the
> data communication with its hardware device, but other resources (e.g.
> CPU time, interrupts, timers, PCI config space, ACPI) are owned by the
> host and virtualized by it for the guest.

I wasn't saying that the guest owns most resources, I was saying that the *untrusted*
host does *not* own most resources that are exposed to the guest.  My understanding
is that everything in your list is owned by the trusted hypervisor in the pKVM model.

What I was pointing out is related to the above discussion about the guest needing
access to hardware that is effectively owned by the untrusted host, e.g. network
access.