Re: Linux x86_64 NMI security issues

[Petr Matousek <pmatouse () redhat com>]

On Thu, Jul 23, 2015 at 06:34:50AM -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> On Jul 23, 2015 6:28 AM, "Petr Matousek" <pmatouse () redhat com> wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 11:12:00AM -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> > > On kernels that are patched for BadIRET and have a fixup_bad_iret
> > > function (which should be most kernels that are keeping up with
> > > low-level security issues), there are two cases.
> > >
> > > Case 1a (more up-to-date kernels where INTERRUPT_RETURN is "jmp
> > > irq_return"): fixup_bad_iret will be invoked and will attempt to
> > > recover.  There's a narrow window in which a new NMI will cause
> > > corruption, in which case all bets are off.  That could hang, crash,
> > > or possibly be exploited for privilege escalation.
> > >
> > > Case 1b (less up-to-date kernels where INTERRUPT_RETURN is "iretq"):
> > > The kernel will try to OOPS due to a bad kernel fault, except that the
> > > OOPS will be processed with the wrong gsbase.  This is basically the
> > > BadIRET condition, and is probably exploitable using similar
> > > techniques to BadIRET.
> >
> > Could you please explain the backtrace leading to this?  You mean the
> > nested nmi return which invokes INTERRUPT_RETURN and in case
> > INTERRUPT_RETURN is "iretq", error_kernelspace won't detect that and
> > won't fixup the gs?
>
> I mean the normal (non-nested) NMI return.  If we return with iretq, then
> the error_bad_iret fixup won't trigger at all because that iretq
> instruction has no fixup entry or swapgs special case.

Hmm, sorry, my bad. I've been looking at rhel-7 -- I see two ways to exit
the NMI handler there -- INTERRUPT_RETURN after the nested_nmi_out label,
which should only trigger on nested NMIs and thus be safe, and the second
one after the nmi_restore label which does jmp irq_return.

And irq_return is:

irq_return:                                                                                                             
                                                                                       
        INTERRUPT_RETURN                                                                                                
                                                                                       
        _ASM_EXTABLE(irq_return, bad_iret)

and error_kernelspace checking for irq_return

error_kernelspace:                                                                                                      
                                                                                       
        incl %ebx                                                                                                       
                                                                                       
        leaq irq_return(%rip),%rcx                                                                                      
                                                                                       
        cmpq %rcx,RIP+8(%rsp)                                                                                           
                                                                                       
        je error_swapgs                                                                                                 
                                                                                       


Now the paravirt iret case is not protected by the error_kernelspace
fixup. How much that is a problem is something I'm going to have a look
at ...

-- 
Petr Matousek / Red Hat Product Security
PGP: 0xC44977CA 8107 AF16 A416 F9AF 18F3  D874 3E78 6F42 C449 77CA