linux-kernel - Re: [RFC PATCH 00/13] Core scheduling v5

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:   Fri, 17 Apr 2020 15:08:25 +0200
From:   Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>
To:     Alexander Graf <graf@...zon.com>
Cc:     Joel Fernandes <joel@...lfernandes.org>,
        vpillai <vpillai@...italocean.com>,
        Nishanth Aravamudan <naravamudan@...italocean.com>,
        Julien Desfossez <jdesfossez@...italocean.com>,
        Tim Chen <tim.c.chen@...ux.intel.com>, mingo@...nel.org,
        tglx@...utronix.de, pjt@...gle.com, torvalds@...ux-foundation.org,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, fweisbec@...il.com,
        keescook@...omium.org, kerrnel@...gle.com,
        Phil Auld <pauld@...hat.com>, Aaron Lu <aaron.lwe@...il.com>,
        Aubrey Li <aubrey.intel@...il.com>, aubrey.li@...ux.intel.com,
        Valentin Schneider <valentin.schneider@....com>,
        Mel Gorman <mgorman@...hsingularity.net>,
        Pawan Gupta <pawan.kumar.gupta@...ux.intel.com>,
        Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@...hat.com>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 00/13] Core scheduling v5

On Fri, Apr 17, 2020 at 02:35:38PM +0200, Alexander Graf wrote:
> On 17.04.20 13:12, Peter Zijlstra wrote:

> If we first kick out the sibling HT for every #VMEXIT, performance will be
> abysmal, no?

I've been given to understand that people serious about virt try really
hard to avoid VMEXIT.


> > That doesn't completely solve things I think. Even if you run all
> > untrusted tasks as core exclusive, you still have a problem of them vs
> > interrupts on the other sibling.
> >
> > You need to somehow arrange all interrupts to the core happen on the
> > same sibling that runs your untrusted task, such that the VERW on
> > return-to-userspace works as intended.
> > 
> > I suppose you can try and play funny games with interrupt routing tied
> > to the force-idle state, but I'm dreading what that'll look like. Or
> > were you going to handle this from your irq_enter() thing too?
> 
> I'm not sure I follow. We have thread local interrupts (timers, IPIs) and
> device interrupts (network, block, etc).
> 
> Thread local ones shouldn't transfer too much knowledge, so I'd be inclined
> to say we can just ignore that attack vector.
> 
> Device interrupts we can easily route to HT0. If we now make "core
> exclusive" a synonym for "always run on HT0", we can guarantee that they
> always land on the same CPU, no?
> 
> Then you don't need to hook into any idle state tracking, because you always
> know which CPU the "safe" one to both schedule tasks and route interrupts to
> is.

That would come apart most mighty when someone does an explicit
sched_setaffinity() for !HT0.

While that might work for some relatively contained systems like
chromeos, it will not work in general I think.