linux-kernel - RE: [RFC] transcendent memory for Linux

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Date:	Wed, 1 Jul 2009 16:02:38 -0700 (PDT)
From:	Dan Magenheimer <dan.magenheimer@...cle.com>
To:	Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@...p.org>
Cc:	Pavel Machek <pavel@....cz>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	xen-devel@...ts.xensource.com, npiggin@...e.de,
	chris.mason@...cle.com, kurt.hackel@...cle.com,
	dave.mccracken@...cle.com, Avi Kivity <avi@...hat.com>,
	Rik van Riel <riel@...hat.com>, alan@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk,
	Rusty Russell <rusty@...tcorp.com.au>,
	Martin Schwidefsky <schwidefsky@...ibm.com>, akpm@...l.org,
	Marcelo Tosatti <mtosatti@...hat.com>,
	Balbir Singh <balbir@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
	tmem-devel@....oracle.com, sunil.mushran@...cle.com,
	linux-mm@...ck.org, Himanshu Raj <rhim@...rosoft.com>,
	Keir Fraser <keir.fraser@...citrix.com>
Subject: RE: [RFC] transcendent memory for Linux

> From: Jeremy Fitzhardinge [mailto:jeremy@...p.org]
> On 06/30/09 14:21, Dan Magenheimer wrote:
> > No, the uuid can't be verified.  Tmem gives no indication
> > as to whether a newly-created pool is already in use (shared)
> > by another guest.  So without both the 128-bit uuid and an
> > already-in-use 64-bit object id and 32-bit page index, no data
> > is readable or writable by the attacker.
> 
> You have to consider things like timing attacks as well (for 
> example, a
> tmem hypercall might return faster if the uuid already exists).
> 
> Besides, you can tell whether a uuid exists, by at least a couple of
> mechanisms (from a quick read of the source, so I might have 
> overlooked something):

All of these still require a large number of guesses
across a 128-bit space of possible uuids, right?
It should be easy to implement "guess limits" in xen
that disable tmem use by a guest if it fails too many guesses.
I'm a bit more worried about:

> You also have to consider the case of a domain which was once part of
> the ocfs cluster, but now is not - it may still know the uuid, but not
> be otherwise allowed to use the cluster.

But on the other hand, the security model here can be that
if a trusted entity becomes untrusted, you have to change
the locks.

> Yeah, a shared namespace of accessible objects is an entirely 
> new thing
> in the Xen universe.  I would also drop Xen support until 
> there's a good
> security story about how they can be used.

While I agree that the security is not bulletproof, I wonder
if this position might be a bit extreme.  Certainly, the NSA
should not turn on tmem in a cluster, but that doesn't mean that
nobody should be allowed to.  I really suspect that there are
less costly / more rewarding attack vectors at several layers
in the hardware/software stack of most clusters.

Dan
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