Re: [PATCH 01/11] arm64: use RET instruction for exiting the trampoline

[Ard Biesheuvel]

On 4 January 2018 at 15:08, Will Deacon <will.deacon@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> Speculation attacks against the entry trampoline can potentially resteer
> the speculative instruction stream through the indirect branch and into
> arbitrary gadgets within the kernel.
>
> This patch defends against these attacks by forcing a misprediction
> through the return stack: a dummy BL instruction loads an entry into
> the stack, so that the predicted program flow of the subsequent RET
> instruction is to a branch-to-self instruction which is finally resolved
> as a branch to the kernel vectors with speculation suppressed.
>
> Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <will.deacon@xxxxxxx>
> ---
>  arch/arm64/kernel/entry.S | 5 ++++-
>  1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
>
> diff --git a/arch/arm64/kernel/entry.S b/arch/arm64/kernel/entry.S
> index 031392ee5f47..b9feb587294d 100644
> --- a/arch/arm64/kernel/entry.S
> +++ b/arch/arm64/kernel/entry.S
> @@ -1029,6 +1029,9 @@ alternative_else_nop_endif
>         .if     \regsize == 64
>         msr     tpidrro_el0, x30        // Restored in kernel_ventry
>         .endif
> +       bl      2f
> +       b       .
> +2:

This deserves a comment, I guess?

Also, is deliberately unbalancing the return stack likely to cause
performance problems, e.g., in libc hot paths?

>         tramp_map_kernel        x30
>  #ifdef CONFIG_RANDOMIZE_BASE
>         adr     x30, tramp_vectors + PAGE_SIZE
> @@ -1041,7 +1044,7 @@ alternative_insn isb, nop, ARM64_WORKAROUND_QCOM_FALKOR_E1003
>         msr     vbar_el1, x30
>         add     x30, x30, #(1b - tramp_vectors)
>         isb
> -       br      x30
> +       ret
>         .endm
>
>         .macro tramp_exit, regsize = 64
> --
> 2.1.4
>