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authorWill Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>2017-11-14 16:19:39 +0000
committerTodd Kjos <tkjos@google.com>2018-01-08 09:39:56 -0800
commitab917177134cab9563a99eb4d9993f0731888424 (patch)
treebf91801091a4cb29325656060566ebd12049793c
parent46ff0432a65688059e6347a4f71007c6a2157db7 (diff)
arm64: Kconfig: Reword UNMAP_KERNEL_AT_EL0 kconfig entryASB-2018-01-05_3.18-o-mr1
Although CONFIG_UNMAP_KERNEL_AT_EL0 does make KASLR more robust, it's actually more useful as a mitigation against speculation attacks that can leak arbitrary kernel data to userspace through speculation. Reword the Kconfig help message to reflect this, and make the option depend on EXPERT so that it is on by default for the majority of users. Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@google.com>
-rw-r--r--arch/arm64/Kconfig13
1 files changed, 6 insertions, 7 deletions
diff --git a/arch/arm64/Kconfig b/arch/arm64/Kconfig
index ad927b44ceca..e1dcafa82559 100644
--- a/arch/arm64/Kconfig
+++ b/arch/arm64/Kconfig
@@ -528,15 +528,14 @@ config FORCE_MAX_ZONEORDER
default "11"
config UNMAP_KERNEL_AT_EL0
- bool "Unmap kernel when running in userspace (aka \"KAISER\")"
+ bool "Unmap kernel when running in userspace (aka \"KAISER\")" if EXPERT
default y
help
- Some attacks against KASLR make use of the timing difference between
- a permission fault which could arise from a page table entry that is
- present in the TLB, and a translation fault which always requires a
- page table walk. This option defends against these attacks by unmapping
- the kernel whilst running in userspace, therefore forcing translation
- faults for all of kernel space.
+ Speculation attacks against some high-performance processors can
+ be used to bypass MMU permission checks and leak kernel data to
+ userspace. This can be defended against by unmapping the kernel
+ when running in userspace, mapping it back in on exception entry
+ via a trampoline page in the vector table.
If unsure, say Y.