Firstly, I only got a few patches of this series so I couldn't review all of
them
- please Cc: me to all future Meltdown and Spectre related patches!
* Dan Williams <dan.j.willi...@intel.com> wrote:
> 'array_idx' is proposed as a generic mechanism to mitigate against
> Spectre-variant-1 attacks, i.e. an attack that bypasses boundary checks
> via speculative execution). The 'array_idx' implementation is expected
> to be safe for current generation cpus across multiple architectures
> (ARM, x86).
nit: Stray closing parenthesis
s/cpus/CPUs
> Based on an original implementation by Linus Torvalds, tweaked to remove
> speculative flows by Alexei Starovoitov, and tweaked again by Linus to
> introduce an x86 assembly implementation for the mask generation.
>
> Co-developed-by: Linus Torvalds <torva...@linux-foundation.org>
> Co-developed-by: Alexei Starovoitov <a...@kernel.org>
> Suggested-by: Cyril Novikov <cnovi...@lynx.com>
> Cc: Russell King <li...@armlinux.org.uk>
> Cc: Peter Zijlstra <pet...@infradead.org>
> Cc: Catalin Marinas <catalin.mari...@arm.com>
> Cc: Will Deacon <will.dea...@arm.com>
> Cc: Thomas Gleixner <t...@linutronix.de>
> Cc: Ingo Molnar <mi...@redhat.com>
> Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" <h...@zytor.com>
> Cc: x...@kernel.org
> Signed-off-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.willi...@intel.com>
> ---
> include/linux/nospec.h | 64
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> 1 file changed, 64 insertions(+)
> create mode 100644 include/linux/nospec.h
>
> diff --git a/include/linux/nospec.h b/include/linux/nospec.h
> new file mode 100644
> index 000000000000..f59f81889ba3
> --- /dev/null
> +++ b/include/linux/nospec.h
> @@ -0,0 +1,64 @@
> +// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
> +// Copyright(c) 2018 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved.
Given the close similarity of Linus's array_access() prototype pseudocode there
should probably also be:
Copyright (C) 2018 Linus Torvalds
in that file?
> +
> +#ifndef __NOSPEC_H__
> +#define __NOSPEC_H__
> +
> +/*
> + * When idx is out of bounds (idx >= sz), the sign bit will be set.
> + * Extend the sign bit to all bits and invert, giving a result of zero
> + * for an out of bounds idx, or ~0UL if within bounds [0, sz).
> + */
> +#ifndef array_idx_mask
> +static inline unsigned long array_idx_mask(unsigned long idx, unsigned long
> sz)
> +{
> + /*
> + * Warn developers about inappropriate array_idx usage.
> + *
> + * Even if the cpu speculates past the WARN_ONCE branch, the
s/cpu/CPU
> + * sign bit of idx is taken into account when generating the
> + * mask.
> + *
> + * This warning is compiled out when the compiler can infer that
> + * idx and sz are less than LONG_MAX.
Please use 'idx' and 'sz' in quotes, to make sure they stand out more in free
flowing comment text. Also please use '()' to denote functions/methods.
I.e. something like:
* Warn developers about inappropriate array_idx() usage.
*
* Even if the CPU speculates past the WARN_ONCE() branch, the
* sign bit of 'idx' is taken into account when generating the
* mask.
*
* This warning is compiled out when the compiler can infer that
* 'idx' and 'sz' are less than LONG_MAX.
That's just one example - please apply it to all comments consistently.
> + */
> + if (WARN_ONCE(idx > LONG_MAX || sz > LONG_MAX,
> + "array_idx limited to range of [0, LONG_MAX]\n"))
Same in user facing messages:
"array_idx() limited to range of [0, LONG_MAX]\n"))
> + * For a code sequence like:
> + *
> + * if (idx < sz) {
> + * idx = array_idx(idx, sz);
> + * val = array[idx];
> + * }
> + *
> + * ...if the cpu speculates past the bounds check then array_idx() will
> + * clamp the index within the range of [0, sz).
s/cpu/CPU
> + */
> +#define array_idx(idx, sz) \
> +({ \
> + typeof(idx) _i = (idx); \
> + typeof(sz) _s = (sz); \
> + unsigned long _mask = array_idx_mask(_i, _s); \
> + \
> + BUILD_BUG_ON(sizeof(_i) > sizeof(long)); \
> + BUILD_BUG_ON(sizeof(_s) > sizeof(long)); \
> + \
> + _i &= _mask; \
> + _i; \
> +})
> +#endif /* __NOSPEC_H__ */
For heaven's sake, please name a size variable as 'size', not 'sz'. We don't
have
a shortage of characters and can deobfuscate common primitives, can we?
Also, beyond the nits, I also hate the namespace here. We have a new generic
header providing two new methods:
#include <linux/nospec.h>
array_idx_mask()
array_idx()
which is then optimized for x86 in asm/barrier.h. That's already a non-sequitor.
Then we introduce uaccess API variants with a _nospec() postfix.
Then we add ifence() to x86.
There's no naming coherency to this.
A better approach would be to signal the 'no speculation' aspect of the
array_idx() methods already: naming it array_idx_nospec() would be a solution,
as it clearly avoids speculation beyond the array boundaries.
Also, without seeing the full series it's hard to tell, whether the
introduction
of linux/nospec.h is justified, but it feels somewhat suspect.
Thanks,
Ingo
