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authorNicholas Piggin <npiggin@gmail.com>2020-11-20 11:06:59 +1100
committerGreg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>2020-11-22 09:56:57 +0100
commit4a1e90af718d1489ffcecc8f52486c4f5dc0f7a6 (patch)
treefdcfd3e0ee354285f70377dd7c51d83e9e406ac2 /Documentation
parentf65bd491ca41e2a19edc92715ddb04e87cca0db9 (diff)
powerpc/64s: flush L1D on kernel entry
commit f79643787e0a0762d2409b7b8334e83f22d85695 upstream. IBM Power9 processors can speculatively operate on data in the L1 cache before it has been completely validated, via a way-prediction mechanism. It is not possible for an attacker to determine the contents of impermissible memory using this method, since these systems implement a combination of hardware and software security measures to prevent scenarios where protected data could be leaked. However these measures don't address the scenario where an attacker induces the operating system to speculatively execute instructions using data that the attacker controls. This can be used for example to speculatively bypass "kernel user access prevention" techniques, as discovered by Anthony Steinhauser of Google's Safeside Project. This is not an attack by itself, but there is a possibility it could be used in conjunction with side-channels or other weaknesses in the privileged code to construct an attack. This issue can be mitigated by flushing the L1 cache between privilege boundaries of concern. This patch flushes the L1 cache on kernel entry. This is part of the fix for CVE-2020-4788. Signed-off-by: Nicholas Piggin <npiggin@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Daniel Axtens <dja@axtens.net> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt3
1 files changed, 3 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt b/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
index 17747dcd0e77..2648ad5e64fd 100644
--- a/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
+++ b/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
@@ -2196,6 +2196,7 @@ bytes respectively. Such letter suffixes can also be entirely omitted.
spec_store_bypass_disable=off [X86]
mds=off [X86]
tsx_async_abort=off [X86]
+ no_entry_flush [PPC]
auto (default)
Mitigate all CPU vulnerabilities, but leave SMT
@@ -2476,6 +2477,8 @@ bytes respectively. Such letter suffixes can also be entirely omitted.
noefi Disable EFI runtime services support.
+ no_entry_flush [PPC] Don't flush the L1-D cache when entering the kernel.
+
noexec [IA-64]
noexec [X86]