Re: [PATCH v5 1/2] x86/speculation: apply IBPB more strictly to avoid cross-process data leak

From: Jiri Kosina
Date: Sun Oct 21 2018 - 19:32:30 EST


On Sun, 21 Oct 2018, Pavel Machek wrote:

> Imagine JIT running evil code (flash, javascript). JIT will prevent evil
> code from doing ptrace() (or maybe there is syscall filter in effect or
> something like that), but if evil code can poison branch buffers and do
> timings, security problem stays.

JITs sort of remove the traditional unix security domain boundary between
mutually (un)trusted code (processess and threads), that's a more general
problem, yes.

> Do we need prctl(I_DONT_RUN_EVIL_CODE)?

That's basically the level of fine-graining Tim's followup patchset
(that's currently being discussed) is eventually going to achieve.

Thanks,

--
Jiri Kosina
SUSE Labs