diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/admin-guide/hw-vuln/l1tf.rst')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/admin-guide/hw-vuln/l1tf.rst | 615 |
1 files changed, 615 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/hw-vuln/l1tf.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/hw-vuln/l1tf.rst new file mode 100644 index 000000000..31653a9f0 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/hw-vuln/l1tf.rst @@ -0,0 +1,615 @@ +L1TF - L1 Terminal Fault +======================== + +L1 Terminal Fault is a hardware vulnerability which allows unprivileged +speculative access to data which is available in the Level 1 Data Cache +when the page table entry controlling the virtual address, which is used +for the access, has the Present bit cleared or other reserved bits set. + +Affected processors +------------------- + +This vulnerability affects a wide range of Intel processors. The +vulnerability is not present on: + + - Processors from AMD, Centaur and other non Intel vendors + + - Older processor models, where the CPU family is < 6 + + - A range of Intel ATOM processors (Cedarview, Cloverview, Lincroft, + Penwell, Pineview, Silvermont, Airmont, Merrifield) + + - The Intel XEON PHI family + + - Intel processors which have the ARCH_CAP_RDCL_NO bit set in the + IA32_ARCH_CAPABILITIES MSR. If the bit is set the CPU is not affected + by the Meltdown vulnerability either. These CPUs should become + available by end of 2018. + +Whether a processor is affected or not can be read out from the L1TF +vulnerability file in sysfs. See :ref:`l1tf_sys_info`. + +Related CVEs +------------ + +The following CVE entries are related to the L1TF vulnerability: + + ============= ================= ============================== + CVE-2018-3615 L1 Terminal Fault SGX related aspects + CVE-2018-3620 L1 Terminal Fault OS, SMM related aspects + CVE-2018-3646 L1 Terminal Fault Virtualization related aspects + ============= ================= ============================== + +Problem +------- + +If an instruction accesses a virtual address for which the relevant page +table entry (PTE) has the Present bit cleared or other reserved bits set, +then speculative execution ignores the invalid PTE and loads the referenced +data if it is present in the Level 1 Data Cache, as if the page referenced +by the address bits in the PTE was still present and accessible. + +While this is a purely speculative mechanism and the instruction will raise +a page fault when it is retired eventually, the pure act of loading the +data and making it available to other speculative instructions opens up the +opportunity for side channel attacks to unprivileged malicious code, +similar to the Meltdown attack. + +While Meltdown breaks the user space to kernel space protection, L1TF +allows to attack any physical memory address in the system and the attack +works across all protection domains. It allows an attack of SGX and also +works from inside virtual machines because the speculation bypasses the +extended page table (EPT) protection mechanism. + + +Attack scenarios +---------------- + +1. Malicious user space +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ + + Operating Systems store arbitrary information in the address bits of a + PTE which is marked non present. This allows a malicious user space + application to attack the physical memory to which these PTEs resolve. + In some cases user-space can maliciously influence the information + encoded in the address bits of the PTE, thus making attacks more + deterministic and more practical. + + The Linux kernel contains a mitigation for this attack vector, PTE + inversion, which is permanently enabled and has no performance + impact. The kernel ensures that the address bits of PTEs, which are not + marked present, never point to cacheable physical memory space. + + A system with an up to date kernel is protected against attacks from + malicious user space applications. + +2. Malicious guest in a virtual machine +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ + + The fact that L1TF breaks all domain protections allows malicious guest + OSes, which can control the PTEs directly, and malicious guest user + space applications, which run on an unprotected guest kernel lacking the + PTE inversion mitigation for L1TF, to attack physical host memory. + + A special aspect of L1TF in the context of virtualization is symmetric + multi threading (SMT). The Intel implementation of SMT is called + HyperThreading. The fact that Hyperthreads on the affected processors + share the L1 Data Cache (L1D) is important for this. As the flaw allows + only to attack data which is present in L1D, a malicious guest running + on one Hyperthread can attack the data which is brought into the L1D by + the context which runs on the sibling Hyperthread of the same physical + core. This context can be host OS, host user space or a different guest. + + If the processor does not support Extended Page Tables, the attack is + only possible, when the hypervisor does not sanitize the content of the + effective (shadow) page tables. + + While solutions exist to mitigate these attack vectors fully, these + mitigations are not enabled by default in the Linux kernel because they + can affect performance significantly. The kernel provides several + mechanisms which can be utilized to address the problem depending on the + deployment scenario. The mitigations, their protection scope and impact + are described in the next sections. + + The default mitigations and the rationale for choosing them are explained + at the end of this document. See :ref:`default_mitigations`. + +.. _l1tf_sys_info: + +L1TF system information +----------------------- + +The Linux kernel provides a sysfs interface to enumerate the current L1TF +status of the system: whether the system is vulnerable, and which +mitigations are active. The relevant sysfs file is: + +/sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/l1tf + +The possible values in this file are: + + =========================== =============================== + 'Not affected' The processor is not vulnerable + 'Mitigation: PTE Inversion' The host protection is active + =========================== =============================== + +If KVM/VMX is enabled and the processor is vulnerable then the following +information is appended to the 'Mitigation: PTE Inversion' part: + + - SMT status: + + ===================== ================ + 'VMX: SMT vulnerable' SMT is enabled + 'VMX: SMT disabled' SMT is disabled + ===================== ================ + + - L1D Flush mode: + + ================================ ==================================== + 'L1D vulnerable' L1D flushing is disabled + + 'L1D conditional cache flushes' L1D flush is conditionally enabled + + 'L1D cache flushes' L1D flush is unconditionally enabled + ================================ ==================================== + +The resulting grade of protection is discussed in the following sections. + + +Host mitigation mechanism +------------------------- + +The kernel is unconditionally protected against L1TF attacks from malicious +user space running on the host. + + +Guest mitigation mechanisms +--------------------------- + +.. _l1d_flush: + +1. L1D flush on VMENTER +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ + + To make sure that a guest cannot attack data which is present in the L1D + the hypervisor flushes the L1D before entering the guest. + + Flushing the L1D evicts not only the data which should not be accessed + by a potentially malicious guest, it also flushes the guest + data. Flushing the L1D has a performance impact as the processor has to + bring the flushed guest data back into the L1D. Depending on the + frequency of VMEXIT/VMENTER and the type of computations in the guest + performance degradation in the range of 1% to 50% has been observed. For + scenarios where guest VMEXIT/VMENTER are rare the performance impact is + minimal. Virtio and mechanisms like posted interrupts are designed to + confine the VMEXITs to a bare minimum, but specific configurations and + application scenarios might still suffer from a high VMEXIT rate. + + The kernel provides two L1D flush modes: + - conditional ('cond') + - unconditional ('always') + + The conditional mode avoids L1D flushing after VMEXITs which execute + only audited code paths before the corresponding VMENTER. These code + paths have been verified that they cannot expose secrets or other + interesting data to an attacker, but they can leak information about the + address space layout of the hypervisor. + + Unconditional mode flushes L1D on all VMENTER invocations and provides + maximum protection. It has a higher overhead than the conditional + mode. The overhead cannot be quantified correctly as it depends on the + workload scenario and the resulting number of VMEXITs. + + The general recommendation is to enable L1D flush on VMENTER. The kernel + defaults to conditional mode on affected processors. + + **Note**, that L1D flush does not prevent the SMT problem because the + sibling thread will also bring back its data into the L1D which makes it + attackable again. + + L1D flush can be controlled by the administrator via the kernel command + line and sysfs control files. See :ref:`mitigation_control_command_line` + and :ref:`mitigation_control_kvm`. + +.. _guest_confinement: + +2. Guest VCPU confinement to dedicated physical cores +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ + + To address the SMT problem, it is possible to make a guest or a group of + guests affine to one or more physical cores. The proper mechanism for + that is to utilize exclusive cpusets to ensure that no other guest or + host tasks can run on these cores. + + If only a single guest or related guests run on sibling SMT threads on + the same physical core then they can only attack their own memory and + restricted parts of the host memory. + + Host memory is attackable, when one of the sibling SMT threads runs in + host OS (hypervisor) context and the other in guest context. The amount + of valuable information from the host OS context depends on the context + which the host OS executes, i.e. interrupts, soft interrupts and kernel + threads. The amount of valuable data from these contexts cannot be + declared as non-interesting for an attacker without deep inspection of + the code. + + **Note**, that assigning guests to a fixed set of physical cores affects + the ability of the scheduler to do load balancing and might have + negative effects on CPU utilization depending on the hosting + scenario. Disabling SMT might be a viable alternative for particular + scenarios. + + For further information about confining guests to a single or to a group + of cores consult the cpusets documentation: + + https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/cgroup-v1/cpusets.txt + +.. _interrupt_isolation: + +3. Interrupt affinity +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ + + Interrupts can be made affine to logical CPUs. This is not universally + true because there are types of interrupts which are truly per CPU + interrupts, e.g. the local timer interrupt. Aside of that multi queue + devices affine their interrupts to single CPUs or groups of CPUs per + queue without allowing the administrator to control the affinities. + + Moving the interrupts, which can be affinity controlled, away from CPUs + which run untrusted guests, reduces the attack vector space. + + Whether the interrupts with are affine to CPUs, which run untrusted + guests, provide interesting data for an attacker depends on the system + configuration and the scenarios which run on the system. While for some + of the interrupts it can be assumed that they won't expose interesting + information beyond exposing hints about the host OS memory layout, there + is no way to make general assumptions. + + Interrupt affinity can be controlled by the administrator via the + /proc/irq/$NR/smp_affinity[_list] files. Limited documentation is + available at: + + https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/IRQ-affinity.txt + +.. _smt_control: + +4. SMT control +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ + + To prevent the SMT issues of L1TF it might be necessary to disable SMT + completely. Disabling SMT can have a significant performance impact, but + the impact depends on the hosting scenario and the type of workloads. + The impact of disabling SMT needs also to be weighted against the impact + of other mitigation solutions like confining guests to dedicated cores. + + The kernel provides a sysfs interface to retrieve the status of SMT and + to control it. It also provides a kernel command line interface to + control SMT. + + The kernel command line interface consists of the following options: + + =========== ========================================================== + nosmt Affects the bring up of the secondary CPUs during boot. The + kernel tries to bring all present CPUs online during the + boot process. "nosmt" makes sure that from each physical + core only one - the so called primary (hyper) thread is + activated. Due to a design flaw of Intel processors related + to Machine Check Exceptions the non primary siblings have + to be brought up at least partially and are then shut down + again. "nosmt" can be undone via the sysfs interface. + + nosmt=force Has the same effect as "nosmt" but it does not allow to + undo the SMT disable via the sysfs interface. + =========== ========================================================== + + The sysfs interface provides two files: + + - /sys/devices/system/cpu/smt/control + - /sys/devices/system/cpu/smt/active + + /sys/devices/system/cpu/smt/control: + + This file allows to read out the SMT control state and provides the + ability to disable or (re)enable SMT. The possible states are: + + ============== =================================================== + on SMT is supported by the CPU and enabled. All + logical CPUs can be onlined and offlined without + restrictions. + + off SMT is supported by the CPU and disabled. Only + the so called primary SMT threads can be onlined + and offlined without restrictions. An attempt to + online a non-primary sibling is rejected + + forceoff Same as 'off' but the state cannot be controlled. + Attempts to write to the control file are rejected. + + notsupported The processor does not support SMT. It's therefore + not affected by the SMT implications of L1TF. + Attempts to write to the control file are rejected. + ============== =================================================== + + The possible states which can be written into this file to control SMT + state are: + + - on + - off + - forceoff + + /sys/devices/system/cpu/smt/active: + + This file reports whether SMT is enabled and active, i.e. if on any + physical core two or more sibling threads are online. + + SMT control is also possible at boot time via the l1tf kernel command + line parameter in combination with L1D flush control. See + :ref:`mitigation_control_command_line`. + +5. Disabling EPT +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ + + Disabling EPT for virtual machines provides full mitigation for L1TF even + with SMT enabled, because the effective page tables for guests are + managed and sanitized by the hypervisor. Though disabling EPT has a + significant performance impact especially when the Meltdown mitigation + KPTI is enabled. + + EPT can be disabled in the hypervisor via the 'kvm-intel.ept' parameter. + +There is ongoing research and development for new mitigation mechanisms to +address the performance impact of disabling SMT or EPT. + +.. _mitigation_control_command_line: + +Mitigation control on the kernel command line +--------------------------------------------- + +The kernel command line allows to control the L1TF mitigations at boot +time with the option "l1tf=". The valid arguments for this option are: + + ============ ============================================================= + full Provides all available mitigations for the L1TF + vulnerability. Disables SMT and enables all mitigations in + the hypervisors, i.e. unconditional L1D flushing + + SMT control and L1D flush control via the sysfs interface + is still possible after boot. Hypervisors will issue a + warning when the first VM is started in a potentially + insecure configuration, i.e. SMT enabled or L1D flush + disabled. + + full,force Same as 'full', but disables SMT and L1D flush runtime + control. Implies the 'nosmt=force' command line option. + (i.e. sysfs control of SMT is disabled.) + + flush Leaves SMT enabled and enables the default hypervisor + mitigation, i.e. conditional L1D flushing + + SMT control and L1D flush control via the sysfs interface + is still possible after boot. Hypervisors will issue a + warning when the first VM is started in a potentially + insecure configuration, i.e. SMT enabled or L1D flush + disabled. + + flush,nosmt Disables SMT and enables the default hypervisor mitigation, + i.e. conditional L1D flushing. + + SMT control and L1D flush control via the sysfs interface + is still possible after boot. Hypervisors will issue a + warning when the first VM is started in a potentially + insecure configuration, i.e. SMT enabled or L1D flush + disabled. + + flush,nowarn Same as 'flush', but hypervisors will not warn when a VM is + started in a potentially insecure configuration. + + off Disables hypervisor mitigations and doesn't emit any + warnings. + It also drops the swap size and available RAM limit restrictions + on both hypervisor and bare metal. + + ============ ============================================================= + +The default is 'flush'. For details about L1D flushing see :ref:`l1d_flush`. + + +.. _mitigation_control_kvm: + +Mitigation control for KVM - module parameter +------------------------------------------------------------- + +The KVM hypervisor mitigation mechanism, flushing the L1D cache when +entering a guest, can be controlled with a module parameter. + +The option/parameter is "kvm-intel.vmentry_l1d_flush=". It takes the +following arguments: + + ============ ============================================================== + always L1D cache flush on every VMENTER. + + cond Flush L1D on VMENTER only when the code between VMEXIT and + VMENTER can leak host memory which is considered + interesting for an attacker. This still can leak host memory + which allows e.g. to determine the hosts address space layout. + + never Disables the mitigation + ============ ============================================================== + +The parameter can be provided on the kernel command line, as a module +parameter when loading the modules and at runtime modified via the sysfs +file: + +/sys/module/kvm_intel/parameters/vmentry_l1d_flush + +The default is 'cond'. If 'l1tf=full,force' is given on the kernel command +line, then 'always' is enforced and the kvm-intel.vmentry_l1d_flush +module parameter is ignored and writes to the sysfs file are rejected. + +.. _mitigation_selection: + +Mitigation selection guide +-------------------------- + +1. No virtualization in use +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ + + The system is protected by the kernel unconditionally and no further + action is required. + +2. Virtualization with trusted guests +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ + + If the guest comes from a trusted source and the guest OS kernel is + guaranteed to have the L1TF mitigations in place the system is fully + protected against L1TF and no further action is required. + + To avoid the overhead of the default L1D flushing on VMENTER the + administrator can disable the flushing via the kernel command line and + sysfs control files. See :ref:`mitigation_control_command_line` and + :ref:`mitigation_control_kvm`. + + +3. Virtualization with untrusted guests +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ + +3.1. SMT not supported or disabled +"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" + + If SMT is not supported by the processor or disabled in the BIOS or by + the kernel, it's only required to enforce L1D flushing on VMENTER. + + Conditional L1D flushing is the default behaviour and can be tuned. See + :ref:`mitigation_control_command_line` and :ref:`mitigation_control_kvm`. + +3.2. EPT not supported or disabled +"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" + + If EPT is not supported by the processor or disabled in the hypervisor, + the system is fully protected. SMT can stay enabled and L1D flushing on + VMENTER is not required. + + EPT can be disabled in the hypervisor via the 'kvm-intel.ept' parameter. + +3.3. SMT and EPT supported and active +""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" + + If SMT and EPT are supported and active then various degrees of + mitigations can be employed: + + - L1D flushing on VMENTER: + + L1D flushing on VMENTER is the minimal protection requirement, but it + is only potent in combination with other mitigation methods. + + Conditional L1D flushing is the default behaviour and can be tuned. See + :ref:`mitigation_control_command_line` and :ref:`mitigation_control_kvm`. + + - Guest confinement: + + Confinement of guests to a single or a group of physical cores which + are not running any other processes, can reduce the attack surface + significantly, but interrupts, soft interrupts and kernel threads can + still expose valuable data to a potential attacker. See + :ref:`guest_confinement`. + + - Interrupt isolation: + + Isolating the guest CPUs from interrupts can reduce the attack surface + further, but still allows a malicious guest to explore a limited amount + of host physical memory. This can at least be used to gain knowledge + about the host address space layout. The interrupts which have a fixed + affinity to the CPUs which run the untrusted guests can depending on + the scenario still trigger soft interrupts and schedule kernel threads + which might expose valuable information. See + :ref:`interrupt_isolation`. + +The above three mitigation methods combined can provide protection to a +certain degree, but the risk of the remaining attack surface has to be +carefully analyzed. For full protection the following methods are +available: + + - Disabling SMT: + + Disabling SMT and enforcing the L1D flushing provides the maximum + amount of protection. This mitigation is not depending on any of the + above mitigation methods. + + SMT control and L1D flushing can be tuned by the command line + parameters 'nosmt', 'l1tf', 'kvm-intel.vmentry_l1d_flush' and at run + time with the matching sysfs control files. See :ref:`smt_control`, + :ref:`mitigation_control_command_line` and + :ref:`mitigation_control_kvm`. + + - Disabling EPT: + + Disabling EPT provides the maximum amount of protection as well. It is + not depending on any of the above mitigation methods. SMT can stay + enabled and L1D flushing is not required, but the performance impact is + significant. + + EPT can be disabled in the hypervisor via the 'kvm-intel.ept' + parameter. + +3.4. Nested virtual machines +"""""""""""""""""""""""""""" + +When nested virtualization is in use, three operating systems are involved: +the bare metal hypervisor, the nested hypervisor and the nested virtual +machine. VMENTER operations from the nested hypervisor into the nested +guest will always be processed by the bare metal hypervisor. If KVM is the +bare metal hypervisor it will: + + - Flush the L1D cache on every switch from the nested hypervisor to the + nested virtual machine, so that the nested hypervisor's secrets are not + exposed to the nested virtual machine; + + - Flush the L1D cache on every switch from the nested virtual machine to + the nested hypervisor; this is a complex operation, and flushing the L1D + cache avoids that the bare metal hypervisor's secrets are exposed to the + nested virtual machine; + + - Instruct the nested hypervisor to not perform any L1D cache flush. This + is an optimization to avoid double L1D flushing. + + +.. _default_mitigations: + +Default mitigations +------------------- + + The kernel default mitigations for vulnerable processors are: + + - PTE inversion to protect against malicious user space. This is done + unconditionally and cannot be controlled. The swap storage is limited + to ~16TB. + + - L1D conditional flushing on VMENTER when EPT is enabled for + a guest. + + The kernel does not by default enforce the disabling of SMT, which leaves + SMT systems vulnerable when running untrusted guests with EPT enabled. + + The rationale for this choice is: + + - Force disabling SMT can break existing setups, especially with + unattended updates. + + - If regular users run untrusted guests on their machine, then L1TF is + just an add on to other malware which might be embedded in an untrusted + guest, e.g. spam-bots or attacks on the local network. + + There is no technical way to prevent a user from running untrusted code + on their machines blindly. + + - It's technically extremely unlikely and from today's knowledge even + impossible that L1TF can be exploited via the most popular attack + mechanisms like JavaScript because these mechanisms have no way to + control PTEs. If this would be possible and not other mitigation would + be possible, then the default might be different. + + - The administrators of cloud and hosting setups have to carefully + analyze the risk for their scenarios and make the appropriate + mitigation choices, which might even vary across their deployed + machines and also result in other changes of their overall setup. + There is no way for the kernel to provide a sensible default for this + kind of scenarios. |