Re: Should Linux set the new constant-time mode CPU flags?

[Jeffrey Walton]

On Thu, Aug 25, 2022 at 7:24 PM Eric Biggers <ebiggers@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Intel and ARM recently published documentation that says that no instructions
> are guaranteed to be constant-time with respect to their data operands, unless a
> "data independent timing" flag in the IA32_UARCH_MISC_CTL register (Intel) or
> DIT register (arm64) is set:
>
> * https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/technical/software-security-guidance/best-practices/data-operand-independent-timing-isa-guidance.html
> * https://developer.arm.com/documentation/ddi0595/2021-06/AArch64-Registers/DIT--Data-Independent-Timing
>
> This is a major problem for crypto code, which needs to be constant-time,
> especially with respect to keys.  And since this is a CPU issue, it affects all
> code running on the CPU.  While neither company is treating this as a security
> disclosure, to me this looks exactly like a CPU vulnerability.
>
> For Intel, given that the mitigation is to set an MSR flag, it seems that the
> kernel will need to do that -- similar to the MSR flags that enable mitigations
> for speculative execution vulnerabilities.
>
> For arm64, it's not clear to me whether the DIT flag is privileged or not.  If
> privileged, I expect it would need to be set by the kernel just like the Intel
> flag.  If unprivileged, I expect there will still be work to do in the kernel,
> as the flag will need to be set when running any crypto code in the kernel.
>
> I'm wondering if people are aware of this issue, and whether anyone has any
> thoughts on whether/where the kernel should be setting these new CPU flags.
> There don't appear to have been any prior discussions about this.  (Thanks to
> Adam Langley, who maintains BoringSSL, for bringing this to my attention.)

The thought that comes to mind for me is, please make setting/clearing
the bit available in userland. Libraries like Botan, Crypto++ and
OpenSSL could benefit from it.

Jeff