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authorKonrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@oracle.com>2018-04-25 22:04:21 -0400
committerThomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>2018-05-03 13:55:48 +0200
commit24f7fc83b9204d20f878c57cb77d261ae825e033 (patch)
tree777dbf52fccab7a461d3c9b39a92c117d0feb89b /Documentation
parent0cc5fa00b0a88dad140b4e5c2cead9951ad36822 (diff)
x86/bugs: Provide boot parameters for the spec_store_bypass_disable mitigation
Contemporary high performance processors use a common industry-wide optimization known as "Speculative Store Bypass" in which loads from addresses to which a recent store has occurred may (speculatively) see an older value. Intel refers to this feature as "Memory Disambiguation" which is part of their "Smart Memory Access" capability. Memory Disambiguation can expose a cache side-channel attack against such speculatively read values. An attacker can create exploit code that allows them to read memory outside of a sandbox environment (for example, malicious JavaScript in a web page), or to perform more complex attacks against code running within the same privilege level, e.g. via the stack. As a first step to mitigate against such attacks, provide two boot command line control knobs: nospec_store_bypass_disable spec_store_bypass_disable=[off,auto,on] By default affected x86 processors will power on with Speculative Store Bypass enabled. Hence the provided kernel parameters are written from the point of view of whether to enable a mitigation or not. The parameters are as follows: - auto - Kernel detects whether your CPU model contains an implementation of Speculative Store Bypass and picks the most appropriate mitigation. - on - disable Speculative Store Bypass - off - enable Speculative Store Bypass [ tglx: Reordered the checks so that the whole evaluation is not done when the CPU does not support RDS ] Signed-off-by: Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@oracle.com> Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> Reviewed-by: Borislav Petkov <bp@suse.de> Reviewed-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt33
1 files changed, 33 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt b/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt
index 11fc28ecdb6d..f32112c55f7e 100644
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt
@@ -2680,6 +2680,9 @@
allow data leaks with this option, which is equivalent
to spectre_v2=off.
+ nospec_store_bypass_disable
+ [HW] Disable all mitigations for the Speculative Store Bypass vulnerability
+
noxsave [BUGS=X86] Disables x86 extended register state save
and restore using xsave. The kernel will fallback to
enabling legacy floating-point and sse state.
@@ -4025,6 +4028,36 @@
Not specifying this option is equivalent to
spectre_v2=auto.
+ spec_store_bypass_disable=
+ [HW] Control Speculative Store Bypass (SSB) Disable mitigation
+ (Speculative Store Bypass vulnerability)
+
+ Certain CPUs are vulnerable to an exploit against a
+ a common industry wide performance optimization known
+ as "Speculative Store Bypass" in which recent stores
+ to the same memory location may not be observed by
+ later loads during speculative execution. The idea
+ is that such stores are unlikely and that they can
+ be detected prior to instruction retirement at the
+ end of a particular speculation execution window.
+
+ In vulnerable processors, the speculatively forwarded
+ store can be used in a cache side channel attack, for
+ example to read memory to which the attacker does not
+ directly have access (e.g. inside sandboxed code).
+
+ This parameter controls whether the Speculative Store
+ Bypass optimization is used.
+
+ on - Unconditionally disable Speculative Store Bypass
+ off - Unconditionally enable Speculative Store Bypass
+ auto - Kernel detects whether the CPU model contains an
+ implementation of Speculative Store Bypass and
+ picks the most appropriate mitigation
+
+ Not specifying this option is equivalent to
+ spec_store_bypass_disable=auto.
+
spia_io_base= [HW,MTD]
spia_fio_base=
spia_pedr=