On Mon, Mar 10, 2025 at 11:44 PM Deepak Gupta debug@rivosinc.com wrote:
Adding documentation on shadow stack for user mode on riscv and kernel interfaces exposed so that user tasks can enable it.
Signed-off-by: Deepak Gupta debug@rivosinc.com
Documentation/arch/riscv/index.rst | 1 + Documentation/arch/riscv/zicfiss.rst | 176 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 2 files changed, 177 insertions(+)
diff --git a/Documentation/arch/riscv/index.rst b/Documentation/arch/riscv/index.rst index be7237b69682..e240eb0ceb70 100644 --- a/Documentation/arch/riscv/index.rst +++ b/Documentation/arch/riscv/index.rst @@ -15,6 +15,7 @@ RISC-V architecture vector cmodx zicfilp
zicfiss
features
diff --git a/Documentation/arch/riscv/zicfiss.rst b/Documentation/arch/riscv/zicfiss.rst new file mode 100644 index 000000000000..5ba389f15b3f --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/arch/riscv/zicfiss.rst @@ -0,0 +1,176 @@ +.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+:Author: Deepak Gupta debug@rivosinc.com +:Date: 12 January 2024
+========================================================= +Shadow stack to protect function returns on RISC-V Linux +=========================================================
+This document briefly describes the interface provided to userspace by Linux +to enable shadow stack for user mode applications on RISV-V
+1. Feature Overview +--------------------
+Memory corruption issues usually result in to crashes, however when in hands of +an adversary and if used creatively can result into variety security issues.
+One of those security issues can be code re-use attacks on program where +adversary can use corrupt return addresses present on stack and chain them +together to perform return oriented programming (ROP) and thus compromising +control flow integrity (CFI) of the program.
+Return addresses live on stack and thus in read-write memory and thus are +susceptible to corruption and allows an adversary to reach any program counter +(PC) in address space. On RISC-V ``zicfiss`` extension provides an alternate +stack termed as shadow stack on which return addresses can be safely placed in +prolog of the function and retrieved in epilog. ``zicfiss`` extension makes +following changes:
+- PTE encodings for shadow stack virtual memory
- An earlier reserved encoding in first stage translation i.e.
- PTE.R=0, PTE.W=1, PTE.X=0 becomes PTE encoding for shadow stack pages.
+- ``sspush x1/x5`` instruction pushes (stores) ``x1/x5`` to shadow stack.
+- ``sspopchk x1/x5`` instruction pops (loads) from shadow stack and compares
- with ``x1/x5`` and if un-equal, CPU raises ``software check exception`` with
- ``*tval = 3``
+Compiler toolchain makes sure that function prologue have ``sspush x1/x5`` to +save return address on shadow stack in addition to regular stack. Similarly +function epilogs have ``ld x5, offset(x2)`` followed by ``sspopchk x5`` to +ensure that popped value from regular stack matches with popped value from +shadow stack.
+2. Shadow stack protections and linux memory manager +-----------------------------------------------------
+As mentioned earlier, shadow stack get new page table encodings and thus have +some special properties assigned to them and instructions that operate on them +as below:
+- Regular stores to shadow stack memory raises access store faults. This way
- shadow stack memory is protected from stray inadvertant writes.
+- Regular loads to shadow stack memory are allowed. This allows stack trace
- utilities or backtrace functions to read true callstack (not tampered).
+- Only shadow stack instructions can generate shadow stack load or shadow stack
- store.
+- Shadow stack load / shadow stack store on read-only memory raises AMO/store
- page fault. Thus both ``sspush x1/x5`` and ``sspopchk x1/x5`` will raise AMO/
- store page fault. This simplies COW handling in kernel During fork, kernel
- can convert shadow stack pages into read-only memory (as it does for regular
- read-write memory) and as soon as subsequent ``sspush`` or ``sspopchk`` in
- userspace is encountered, then kernel can perform COW.
+- Shadow stack load / shadow stack store on read-write, read-write-execute
- memory raises an access fault. This is a fatal condition because shadow stack
- should never be operating on read-write, read-write-execute memory.
+3. ELF and psABI +-----------------
+Toolchain sets up :c:macro:`GNU_PROPERTY_RISCV_FEATURE_1_BCFI` for property +:c:macro:`GNU_PROPERTY_RISCV_FEATURE_1_AND` in notes section of the object file.
+4. Linux enabling +------------------
+User space programs can have multiple shared objects loaded in its address space +and it's a difficult task to make sure all the dependencies have been compiled +with support of shadow stack. Thus it's left to dynamic loader to enable +shadow stack for the program.
+5. prctl() enabling +--------------------
+:c:macro:`PR_SET_SHADOW_STACK_STATUS` / :c:macro:`PR_GET_SHADOW_STACK_STATUS` / +:c:macro:`PR_LOCK_SHADOW_STACK_STATUS` are three prctls added to manage shadow +stack enabling for tasks. prctls are arch agnostic and returns -EINVAL on other +arches.
+* prctl(PR_SET_SHADOW_STACK_STATUS, unsigned long arg)
+If arg1 :c:macro:`PR_SHADOW_STACK_ENABLE` and if CPU supports ``zicfiss`` then +kernel will enable shadow stack for the task. Dynamic loader can issue this +:c:macro:`prctl` once it has determined that all the objects loaded in address +space have support for shadow stack. Additionally if there is a +:c:macro:`dlopen` to an object which wasn't compiled with ``zicfiss``, dynamic +loader can issue this prctl with arg1 set to 0 (i.e. +:c:macro:`PR_SHADOW_STACK_ENABLE` being clear)
+* prctl(PR_GET_SHADOW_STACK_STATUS, unsigned long *arg)
+Returns current status of indirect branch tracking. If enabled it'll return +:c:macro:`PR_SHADOW_STACK_ENABLE`.
+* prctl(PR_LOCK_SHADOW_STACK_STATUS, unsigned long arg)
+Locks current status of shadow stack enabling on the task. User space may want +to run with strict security posture and wouldn't want loading of objects +without ``zicfiss`` support in it and thus would want to disallow disabling of +shadow stack on current task. In that case user space can use this prctl to +lock current settings.
+5. violations related to returns with shadow stack enabled +-----------------------------------------------------------
+Pertaining to shadow stack, CPU raises software check exception in following +condition:
+- On execution of ``sspopchk x1/x5``, ``x1/x5`` didn't match top of shadow
- stack. If mismatch happens then cpu does ``*tval = 3`` and raise software
- check exception.
+Linux kernel will treat this as :c:macro:`SIGSEV`` with code = +:c:macro:`SEGV_CPERR` and follow normal course of signal delivery.
+6. Shadow stack tokens +----------------------- +Regular stores on shadow stacks are not allowed and thus can't be tampered +with via arbitrary stray writes due to bugs. Method of pivoting / switching to +shadow stack is simply writing to csr ``CSR_SSP`` changes active shadow stack. +This can be problematic because usually value to be written to ``CSR_SSP`` will +be loaded somewhere in writeable memory and thus allows an adversary to +corruption bug in software to pivot to an any address in shadow stack range. +Shadow stack tokens can help mitigate this problem by making sure that:
+- When software is switching away from a shadow stack, shadow stack pointer
- should be saved on shadow stack itself and call it ``shadow stack token``
+- When software is switching to a shadow stack, it should read the
- ``shadow stack token`` from shadow stack pointer and verify that
- ``shadow stack token`` itself is pointer to shadow stack itself.
+- Once the token verification is done, software can perform the write to
- ``CSR_SSP`` to switch shadow stack.
+Here software can be user mode task runtime itself which is managing various +contexts as part of single thread. Software can be kernel as well when kernel +has to deliver a signal to user task and must save shadow stack pointer. Kernel +can perform similar procedure by saving a token on user shadow stack itself. +This way whenever :c:macro:`sigreturn` happens, kernel can read the token and +verify the token and then switch to shadow stack. Using this mechanism, kernel +helps user task so that any corruption issue in user task is not exploited by +adversary by arbitrarily using :c:macro:`sigreturn`. Adversary will have to +make sure that there is a ``shadow stack token`` in addition to invoking +:c:macro:`sigreturn`
+7. Signal shadow stack +----------------------- +Following structure has been added to sigcontext for RISC-V::
- struct __sc_riscv_cfi_state {
unsigned long ss_ptr;- };
+As part of signal delivery, shadow stack token is saved on current shadow stack +itself and updated pointer is saved away in :c:macro:`ss_ptr` field in +:c:macro:`__sc_riscv_cfi_state` under :c:macro:`sigcontext`. Existing shadow +stack allocation is used for signal delivery. During :c:macro:`sigreturn`, +kernel will obtain :c:macro:`ss_ptr` from :c:macro:`sigcontext` and verify the +saved token on shadow stack itself and switch shadow stack.
LGTM.
Reviewed-by: Zong Li zong.li@sifive.com
-- 2.34.1
linux-riscv mailing list linux-riscv@lists.infradead.org http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-riscv