Quoting Linus:
I do think that it would be a good idea to very expressly document
the fact that it's not that the user access itself is unsafe. I do
agree that things like "get_user()" want to be protected, but not
because of any direct bugs or problems with get_user() and friends,
but simply because get_user() is an excellent source of a pointer
that is obviously controlled from a potentially attacking user
space. So it's a prime candidate for then finding _subsequent_
accesses that can then be used to perturb the cache.
Unlike the __get_user() case get_user() includes the address limit check
near the pointer de-reference. With that locality the speculation can be
mitigated with pointer narrowing rather than a barrier, i.e.
array_index_nospec(). Where the narrowing is performed by:
cmp %limit, %ptr
sbb %mask, %mask
and %mask, %ptr
With respect to speculation the value of %ptr is either less than %limit
or NULL.
Co-developed-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: linux-arch@vger.kernel.org
Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Cc: kernel-hardening@lists.openwall.com
Cc: gregkh@linuxfoundation.org
Cc: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Cc: Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org>
Cc: torvalds@linux-foundation.org
Cc: alan@linux.intel.com
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/151727417469.33451.11804043010080838495.stgit@dwillia2-desk3.amr.corp.intel.com
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