[PATCH] tpm: Document UEFI event log quirks
From: Jarkko Sakkinen
Date: Wed Jul 03 2019 - 12:11:23 EST
There are some weird quirks when it comes to UEFI event log. Provide a
brief introduction to TPM event log mechanism and describe the quirks
and how they can be sorted out.
Signed-off-by: Jarkko Sakkinen <jarkko.sakkinen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
Documentation/security/tpm/tpm-eventlog.rst | 53 +++++++++++++++++++++
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create mode 100644 Documentation/security/tpm/tpm-eventlog.rst
diff --git a/Documentation/security/tpm/tpm-eventlog.rst b/Documentation/security/tpm/tpm-eventlog.rst
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+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+=============
+TPM Event Log
+=============
+
+| Authors:
+| Stefan Berger <stefanb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
+
+This document briefly describes what TPM log is and how it is handed
+over from the preboot firmware to the operating system.
+
+Introduction
+============
+
+The preboot firmware maintains an event log that gets new entries every
+time something gets hashed by it to any of the PCR registers. The events
+are segregated by their type and contain the value of the hashed PCR
+register. Typically, the preboot firmware will hash the components to
+who execution is to be handed over or actions relevant to the boot
+process.
+
+The main application for this is remote attestation and the reason why
+it is useful is nicely put in the very first section of [1]:
+
+"Attestation is used to provide information about the platform’s state
+to a challenger. However, PCR contents are difficult to interpret;
+therefore, attestation is typically more useful when the PCR contents
+are accompanied by a measurement log. While not trusted on their own,
+the measurement log contains a richer set of information than do the PCR
+contents. The PCR contents are used to provide the validation of the
+measurement log."
+
+UEFI event log
+==============
+
+UEFI provided event log has a few somewhat weird quirks.
+
+Before calling ExitBootServices() Linux EFI stub copies the event log to
+a custom configuration table defined by the stub itself. Unfortanely,
+the events generated by ExitBootServices() do end up to the table.
+
+The firmware provides so called final events configuration table to sort
+out this issue. Events gets mirrored to this table after the first time
+EFI_TCG2_PROTOCOL.GetEventLog() gets called.
+
+This introduces another problem: nothing guarantees that it is not
+called before the stub gets to run. Thus, it needs to copy the final
+events table preboot size to the custom configuration table so that
+kernel offset it later on.
+
+[1] https://trustedcomputinggroup.org/resource/pc-client-specific-platform-firmware-profile-specification/
+[2] The final concatenation is done in drivers/char/tpm/eventlog/efi.c
--
2.20.1