Re: [PATCH 10/17] prmem: documentation

From: Andy Lutomirski
Date: Tue Nov 13 2018 - 13:37:28 EST


On Tue, Nov 13, 2018 at 10:33 AM Igor Stoppa <igor.stoppa@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> I forgot one sentence :-(
>
> On 13/11/2018 20:31, Igor Stoppa wrote:
> > On 13/11/2018 19:47, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> >
> >> For general rare-writish stuff, I don't think we want IRQs running
> >> with them mapped anywhere for write. For AVC and IMA, I'm less sure.
> >
> > Why would these be less sensitive?
> >
> > But I see a big difference between my initial implementation and this one.
> >
> > In my case, by using a shared mapping, visible to all cores, freezing
> > the core that is performing the write would have exposed the writable
> > mapping to a potential attack run from another core.
> >
> > If the mapping is private to the core performing the write, even if it
> > is frozen, it's much harder to figure out what it had mapped and where,
> > from another core.
> >
> > To access that mapping, the attack should be performed from the ISR, I
> > think.
>
> Unless the secondary mapping is also available to other cores, through
> the shared mm_struct ?
>

I don't think this matters much. The other cores will only be able to
use that mapping when they're doing a rare write.