[PATCH V8] perf/x86: Reset the dirty counter to prevent the leak for an RDPMC task

From: kan . liang
Date: Mon May 17 2021 - 12:17:16 EST


From: Kan Liang <kan.liang@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

The counter value of a perf task may leak to another RDPMC task.
For example, a perf stat task as below is running on CPU 0.

perf stat -e 'branches,cycles' -- taskset -c 0 ./workload

In the meantime, an RDPMC task, which is also running on CPU 0, may read
the GP counters periodically. (The RDPMC task creates a fixed event,
but read four GP counters.)

$./rdpmc_read_all_counters
index 0x0 value 0x8001e5970f99
index 0x1 value 0x8005d750edb6
index 0x2 value 0x0
index 0x3 value 0x0

index 0x0 value 0x8002358e48a5
index 0x1 value 0x8006bd1e3bc9
index 0x2 value 0x0
index 0x3 value 0x0

It is a potential security issue. Once the attacker knows what the other
thread is counting. The PerfMon counter can be used as a side-channel to
attack cryptosystems.

The counter value of the perf stat task leaks to the RDPMC task because
perf never clears the counter when it's stopped.

Three methods were considered to address the issue.
- Unconditionally reset the counter in x86_pmu_del(). It can bring extra
overhead even when there is no RDPMC task running.
- Only reset the un-assigned dirty counters when the RDPMC task is
scheduled in via sched_task(). It fails for the below case.

Thread A Thread B

clone(CLONE_THREAD) --->
set_affine(0)
set_affine(1)
while (!event-enabled)
;
event = perf_event_open()
mmap(event)
ioctl(event, IOC_ENABLE); --->
RDPMC
Counters are still leaked to the thread B.
- Only reset the un-assigned dirty counters before updating the CR4.PCE
bit. The method is implemented here.

The dirty counter is a counter, on which the assigned event has been
deleted, but the counter is not reset. To track the dirty counters,
add a 'dirty' variable in the struct cpu_hw_events.

The security issue can only be found with an RDPMC task. To enable the
RDMPC, the CR4.PCE bit has to be updated. Add a
perf_clear_dirty_counters() right before updating the CR4.PCE bit to
clear the existing dirty counters. Only the current un-assigned dirty
counters are reset, bacuase the RDPMC assigned dirty counters will be
updated soon.

The RDPMC is not an Intel-only feature. Add the changes in the x86
generic code.

After applying the patch,

$ ./rdpmc_read_all_counters
index 0x0 value 0x0
index 0x1 value 0x0
index 0x2 value 0x0
index 0x3 value 0x0

index 0x0 value 0x0
index 0x1 value 0x0
index 0x2 value 0x0
index 0x3 value 0x0

Performance

The performance of a context switch only be impacted when there are two
or more perf users and one of the users must be an RDPMC user. In other
cases, there is no performance impact.

The worst-case occurs when there are two users: the RDPMC user only
applies one counter; while the other user applies all available
counters. When the RDPMC task is scheduled in, all the counters, other
than the RDPMC assigned one, have to be reset.

Here is the test result for the worst-case.

The test is implemented on an Ice Lake platform, which has 8 GP
counters and 3 fixed counters (Not include SLOTS counter).

The lat_ctx is used to measure the context switching time.

lat_ctx -s 128K -N 1000 processes 2

I instrument the lat_ctx to open all 8 GP counters and 3 fixed
counters for one task. The other task opens a fixed counter and enable
RDPMC.

Without the patch:
The context switch time is 4.97 us

With the patch:
The context switch time is 5.16 us

There is ~4% performance drop for the context switching time in the
worst-case.

Suggested-by: Peter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Kan Liang <kan.liang@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---

Changes since V7
- Drop the method which clear the dirty counters in sched_task()
- Clear the dirty counters before updating the CR4.PCE bit.

Changes since V6:
- Drop the new method check_leakage()
- Update per-PMU sched_cb_usage in mmap/munmap().
- Clear dirty counters in mmap() for the first RDPMC read.

Changes since V5:
- Don't update perf_sched_cb_{inc,dec} in mmap/munmap().
Don't check and clear dirty counters in sched_task().
Because perf_sched_cb_{inc,dec} modify per-CPU state. The mmap() and
munmap() can be invoked in different CPU.
- Add a new method check_leakage() to check and clear dirty counters
to prevent potential leakage.

Changes since V4:
- Fix the warning with CONFIG_DEBUG_PREEMPT=y
Disable the interrupts and preemption around perf_sched_cb_inc/dec()
to protect the sched_cb_list. I don't think we touch the area in NMI.
Disabling the interrupts should be good enough to protect the cpuctx.
We don't need perf_ctx_lock().

Changes since V3:
- Fix warnings reported by kernel test robot <lkp@xxxxxxxxx>
- Move bitmap_empty() check after clearing assigned counters.
It should be very likely that the cpuc->dirty is non-empty.
Move it after the clearing can skip the for_each_set_bit() and
bitmap_zero().

The V2 can be found here.
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20200821195754.20159-3-kan.liang@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/

Changes since V2:
- Unconditionally set cpuc->dirty. The worst case for an RDPMC task is
that we may have to clear all counters for the first time in
x86_pmu_event_mapped. After that, the sched_task() will clear/update
the 'dirty'. Only the real 'dirty' counters are clear. For a non-RDPMC
task, it's harmless to unconditionally set the cpuc->dirty.
- Remove the !is_sampling_event() check
- Move the code into x86 generic file, because RDPMC is not a Intel-only
feature.

Changes since V1:
- Drop the old method, which unconditionally reset the counter in
x86_pmu_del().
Only reset the dirty counters when a RDPMC task is sheduled in.

arch/x86/events/core.c | 28 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++-
arch/x86/events/perf_event.h | 1 +
arch/x86/include/asm/perf_event.h | 1 +
arch/x86/mm/tlb.c | 10 ++++++++--
4 files changed, 37 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/arch/x86/events/core.c b/arch/x86/events/core.c
index c6fedd2..05f9490 100644
--- a/arch/x86/events/core.c
+++ b/arch/x86/events/core.c
@@ -1636,6 +1636,8 @@ static void x86_pmu_del(struct perf_event *event, int flags)
if (cpuc->txn_flags & PERF_PMU_TXN_ADD)
goto do_del;

+ __set_bit(event->hw.idx, cpuc->dirty);
+
/*
* Not a TXN, therefore cleanup properly.
*/
@@ -2484,6 +2486,31 @@ static int x86_pmu_event_init(struct perf_event *event)
return err;
}

+void perf_clear_dirty_counters(void)
+{
+ struct cpu_hw_events *cpuc = this_cpu_ptr(&cpu_hw_events);
+ int i;
+
+ /* Don't need to clear the assigned counter. */
+ for (i = 0; i < cpuc->n_events; i++)
+ __clear_bit(cpuc->assign[i], cpuc->dirty);
+
+ if (bitmap_empty(cpuc->dirty, X86_PMC_IDX_MAX))
+ return;
+
+ for_each_set_bit(i, cpuc->dirty, X86_PMC_IDX_MAX) {
+ /* Metrics and fake events don't have corresponding HW counters. */
+ if (is_metric_idx(i) || (i == INTEL_PMC_IDX_FIXED_VLBR))
+ continue;
+ else if (i >= INTEL_PMC_IDX_FIXED)
+ wrmsrl(MSR_ARCH_PERFMON_FIXED_CTR0 + (i - INTEL_PMC_IDX_FIXED), 0);
+ else
+ wrmsrl(x86_pmu_event_addr(i), 0);
+ }
+
+ bitmap_zero(cpuc->dirty, X86_PMC_IDX_MAX);
+}
+
static void x86_pmu_event_mapped(struct perf_event *event, struct mm_struct *mm)
{
if (!(event->hw.flags & PERF_X86_EVENT_RDPMC_ALLOWED))
@@ -2507,7 +2534,6 @@ static void x86_pmu_event_mapped(struct perf_event *event, struct mm_struct *mm)

static void x86_pmu_event_unmapped(struct perf_event *event, struct mm_struct *mm)
{
-
if (!(event->hw.flags & PERF_X86_EVENT_RDPMC_ALLOWED))
return;

diff --git a/arch/x86/events/perf_event.h b/arch/x86/events/perf_event.h
index 10c8171..55bd891 100644
--- a/arch/x86/events/perf_event.h
+++ b/arch/x86/events/perf_event.h
@@ -229,6 +229,7 @@ struct cpu_hw_events {
*/
struct perf_event *events[X86_PMC_IDX_MAX]; /* in counter order */
unsigned long active_mask[BITS_TO_LONGS(X86_PMC_IDX_MAX)];
+ unsigned long dirty[BITS_TO_LONGS(X86_PMC_IDX_MAX)];
int enabled;

int n_events; /* the # of events in the below arrays */
diff --git a/arch/x86/include/asm/perf_event.h b/arch/x86/include/asm/perf_event.h
index ebf4ebd..0c326aa 100644
--- a/arch/x86/include/asm/perf_event.h
+++ b/arch/x86/include/asm/perf_event.h
@@ -482,6 +482,7 @@ struct x86_pmu_lbr {

extern void perf_get_x86_pmu_capability(struct x86_pmu_capability *cap);
extern void perf_check_microcode(void);
+extern void perf_clear_dirty_counters(void);
extern int x86_perf_rdpmc_index(struct perf_event *event);
#else
static inline void perf_get_x86_pmu_capability(struct x86_pmu_capability *cap)
diff --git a/arch/x86/mm/tlb.c b/arch/x86/mm/tlb.c
index 7880468..cfe6b1e 100644
--- a/arch/x86/mm/tlb.c
+++ b/arch/x86/mm/tlb.c
@@ -14,6 +14,7 @@
#include <asm/nospec-branch.h>
#include <asm/cache.h>
#include <asm/apic.h>
+#include <asm/perf_event.h>

#include "mm_internal.h"

@@ -404,9 +405,14 @@ static inline void cr4_update_pce_mm(struct mm_struct *mm)
{
if (static_branch_unlikely(&rdpmc_always_available_key) ||
(!static_branch_unlikely(&rdpmc_never_available_key) &&
- atomic_read(&mm->context.perf_rdpmc_allowed)))
+ atomic_read(&mm->context.perf_rdpmc_allowed))) {
+ /*
+ * Clear the existing dirty counters to
+ * prevent the leak for an RDPMC task.
+ */
+ perf_clear_dirty_counters();
cr4_set_bits_irqsoff(X86_CR4_PCE);
- else
+ } else
cr4_clear_bits_irqsoff(X86_CR4_PCE);
}

--
2.7.4