Re: [PATCH v2 2/6] driver core: Add common support to skip probe for un-authorized devices

[Dan Williams]

On Thu, Sep 30, 2021 at 6:41 PM Alan Stern <stern@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Sep 30, 2021 at 01:52:59PM -0700, Dan Williams wrote:
> > On Thu, Sep 30, 2021 at 1:44 PM Alan Stern <stern@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Thu, Sep 30, 2021 at 12:23:36PM -0700, Andi Kleen wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > I don't think the current mitigations under discussion here are about
> > > > > keeping the system working. In fact most encrypted VM configs tend to
> > > > > stop booting as a preferred way to handle security issues.
> > > >
> > > > Maybe we should avoid the "trusted" term here. We're only really using it
> > > > because USB is using it and we're now using a common framework like Greg
> > > > requested. But I don't think it's the right way to think about it.
> > > >
> > > > We usually call the drivers "hardened". The requirement for a hardened
> > > > driver is that all interactions through MMIO/port/config space IO/MSRs are
> > > > sanitized and do not cause memory safety issues or other information leaks.
> > > > Other than that there is no requirement on the functionality. In particular
> > > > DOS is ok since a malicious hypervisor can decide to not run the guest at
> > > > any time anyways.
> > > >
> > > > Someone loading an malicious driver inside the guest would be out of scope.
> > > > If an attacker can do that inside the guest you already violated the
> > > > security mechanisms and there are likely easier ways to take over the guest
> > > > or leak data.
> > > >
> > > > The goal of the device filter mechanism is to prevent loading unhardened
> > > > drivers that could be exploited without them being themselves malicious.
> > >
> > > If all you want to do is prevent someone from loading a bunch of
> > > drivers that you have identified as unhardened, why not just use a
> > > modprobe blacklist?  Am I missing something?
> >
> > modules != drivers (i.e. multi-driver modules are a thing) and builtin
> > modules do not adhere to modprobe policy.
> >
> > There is also a desire to be able to support a single kernel image
> > across hosts and guests. So, if you were going to say, "just compile
> > all unnecessary drivers as modules" that defeats the common kernel
> > image goal. For confidential computing the expectation is that the
> > necessary device set is small. As you can see in the patches in this
> > case it's just a few lines of PCI ids and a hack to the virtio bus to
> > achieve the goal of disabling all extraneous devices by default.
>
>
>
> If your goal is to prevent some unwanted _drivers_ from operating --
> or all but a few desired drivers, as the case may be -- why extend
> the "authorized" API to all _devices_?  Why not instead develop a
> separate API (but of similar form) for drivers?
>
> Wouldn't that make more sense?  It corresponds a lot more directly
> with what you say you want to accomplish.

This was v1. v1 was NAKd [1] [2]:

[1]: https://lore.kernel.org/all/YQwpa+LAYt7YZ5dh@xxxxxxxxx/
[2]: https://lore.kernel.org/all/YQzDqm6FOezM6Rnu@xxxxxxxxx/

> What would you do in the theoretical case where two separate drivers
> can manage the same device, but one of them is desired (or hardened)
> and the other isn't?

Allow for user override, just like we do today for new_id, remove_id,
bind, and unbind  when default driver policy is insufficient.

echo 1 > /sys/bus/$bus/devices/$device/authorized
echo $device > /sys/bus/$bus/drivers/$desired_driver/bind

The device filter is really only necessary to bootstrap until you can
run override policy scripts. The driver firewall approach was overkill
in that regard.