Re: [patch 00/38] x86/retbleed: Call depth tracking mitigation

Sami Tolvanen
2022-07-18T22:48:45Z

On Mon, Jul 18, 2022 at 2:18 PM Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Jul 18, 2022 at 10:44:14PM +0200, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> > And we need input from the Clang folks because their CFI work also puts
> > stuff in front of the function entry, which nicely collides.
>
> Right, I need to go look at the latest kCFI patches, that sorta got
> side-tracked for working on all the retbleed muck :/
>
> Basically kCFI wants to preface every (indirect callable) function with:
>
> __cfi_\func:
> int3
> movl $0x12345678, %rax
> int3
> int3
> \func:

Yes, and in order to avoid scattering the code with call target
gadgets, the preamble should remain immediately before the function.

> Ofc, we can still put the whole:
>
> sarq $5, PER_CPU_VAR(__x86_call_depth);
> jmp \func_direct
>
> thing in front of that.

Sure, that would work.

> But it does somewhat destroy the version I had that only needs the
> 10 bytes padding for the sarq.

There's also the question of how function alignment should work in the
KCFI case. Currently, the __cfi_ preamble is 16-byte aligned, which
obviously means the function itself isn't.

Sami