Re: [PATCH 0/3] arm64:msr: Add MSR driver

From: Marc Zyngier
Date: Tue Dec 01 2020 - 10:38:11 EST


On 2020-12-01 14:25, wangrongwei wrote:
2020年12月1日 下午4:12,Marc Zyngier <maz@xxxxxxxxxx> 写道:

On 2020-12-01 03:09, wangrongwei wrote:
Hi
We have validate this driver in vm and physical machine, and works fine.

But what does "work fine" mean? None of these system registers are supposed
to be accessible from userspace, so please explain *what* you are trying to
do with this, other that introducing security holes and general system
instability?
I think I know what you mean. Do you want me to describe how we achieved it?
In x86, the different registers can be accessed directly using the
rdmsr and wrmsr instructions, but in ARM, since these two instructions
are missing, so we modify the code segment during runtime, similar to
the principle of static_key.

[...]

These are implementation details, none of which answer my question:

What makes you think this is a good idea? I cannot see any legitimate
reason for userspace to ever access privileged system registers, and
the fact that x86 has such feature isn't a good justification.

M.
--
Jazz is not dead. It just smells funny...