RE: [Xen-devel] [PATCH] [v2] xen: hypercall: fix out-of-bounds memcpy

[David Laight]

From: Arnd Bergmann
> Sent: 09 February 2018 12:58
...
> However, aside from this driver, I wonder if we should be worried about
> Spectre type 1 attacks on similar code, when gcc-8 turns a switch/case
> statement into an array lookup behind our back, e.g. in an ioctl handler.
> Has anybody got this on their radar?

The canonical code for a switch statement is to jump indirect on an array
of code pointers.
ioctl handlers probably use a series of compares because the values are
sparse.

Also remember that gcc-8 will convert dense switch statements that just
load a value into a data array lookup.

I guess both those jump tables are potential attack vectors.
Not quite sure how they might be used to leak info though.

	David