Thread (7 messages) 7 messages, 4 authors, 2021-05-21

Re: [PATCH 0/8] xen: harden frontends against malicious backends

From: Marek Marczykowski-Górecki <hidden>
Date: 2021-05-21 10:43:15
Also in: linux-block, lkml, netdev, xen-devel

On Thu, May 13, 2021 at 12:02:54PM +0200, Juergen Gross wrote:
Xen backends of para-virtualized devices can live in dom0 kernel, dom0
user land, or in a driver domain. This means that a backend might
reside in a less trusted environment than the Xen core components, so
a backend should not be able to do harm to a Xen guest (it can still
mess up I/O data, but it shouldn't be able to e.g. crash a guest by
other means or cause a privilege escalation in the guest).

Unfortunately many frontends in the Linux kernel are fully trusting
their respective backends. This series is starting to fix the most
important frontends: console, disk and network.

It was discussed to handle this as a security problem, but the topic
was discussed in public before, so it isn't a real secret.
Is it based on patches we ship in Qubes[1] and also I've sent here some
years ago[2]? I see a lot of similarities. If not, you may want to
compare them.

[1] https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-linux-kernel/
[2] https://lists.xenproject.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2018-04/msg02336.html

Juergen Gross (8):
  xen: sync include/xen/interface/io/ring.h with Xen's newest version
  xen/blkfront: read response from backend only once
  xen/blkfront: don't take local copy of a request from the ring page
  xen/blkfront: don't trust the backend response data blindly
  xen/netfront: read response from backend only once
  xen/netfront: don't read data from request on the ring page
  xen/netfront: don't trust the backend response data blindly
  xen/hvc: replace BUG_ON() with negative return value

 drivers/block/xen-blkfront.c    | 118 +++++++++-----
 drivers/net/xen-netfront.c      | 184 ++++++++++++++-------
 drivers/tty/hvc/hvc_xen.c       |  15 +-
 include/xen/interface/io/ring.h | 278 ++++++++++++++++++--------------
 4 files changed, 369 insertions(+), 226 deletions(-)

-- 
2.26.2
-- 
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
Invisible Things Lab

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