linux-kernel - Re: [RFC PATCH v2 6/6] x86/entry/pti: don't switch PGD on when pti

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Date:   Thu, 11 Jan 2018 10:51:54 -0800
From:   Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To:     Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...ux.intel.com>
Cc:     Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@...hat.com>,
        Alexei Starovoitov <alexei.starovoitov@...il.com>,
        Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>, Willy Tarreau <w@....eu>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>, X86 ML <x86@...nel.org>,
        Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>,
        Brian Gerst <brgerst@...il.com>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
        "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH v2 6/6] x86/entry/pti: don't switch PGD on when
 pti_disable is set

On Thu, Jan 11, 2018 at 10:38 AM, Dave Hansen
<dave.hansen@...ux.intel.com> wrote:
> On 01/11/2018 10:32 AM, Josh Poimboeuf wrote:
>>> hmm. Exposing cr3 to user space will make it trivial for user process
>>> to know whether kpti is active. Not sure how exploitable such
>>> information leak.
>> It's already trivial to detect PTI from user space.
>
> Do tell.

One way to do it is to just run the attack, and see if you get something.

So it's not really "is PTI enabled", but a "is meltdown there". Then
you just use that together with cpuinfo to decide if PTI is enabled.

So I think Josh is 100% right. Detecting PTI on/off is not hard.

But that does *not* mean that %cr3 isn't secret. %cr3 should
definitely never *ever* be accessible to user space.

             Linus