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[0/4] Add support to exclude kernel mode hardware assisted instruction tracing

Message ID cover.1611909025.git.saiprakash.ranjan@codeaurora.org
Headers show
Series Add support to exclude kernel mode hardware assisted instruction tracing | expand

Message

Sai Prakash Ranjan Jan. 29, 2021, 7:05 p.m. UTC 
Hardware assisted tracing families such as ARM Coresight, Intel PT
provides rich tracing capabilities including instruction level
tracing and accurate timestamps which are very useful for profiling
and also pose a significant security risk. One such example of
security risk is when kernel mode tracing is not excluded and these
hardware assisted tracing can be used to analyze cryptographic code
execution. In this case, even the root user must not be able to infer
anything.

To explain it more clearly, here is the quote from a member of the
security team (credits: Mattias Nissler),

"Consider a system where disk contents are encrypted and the encryption
key is set up by the user when mounting the file system. From that point
on the encryption key resides in the kernel. It seems reasonable to
expect that the disk encryption key be protected from exfiltration even
if the system later suffers a root compromise (or even against insiders
that have root access), at least as long as the attacker doesn't
manage to compromise the kernel."

Here the idea is to protect such important information from all users
including root users since root privileges does not have to mean full
control over the kernel [1] and root compromise does not have to be
the end of the world.

Currently we can exclude kernel mode tracing via perf_event_paranoid
sysctl but it has following limitations,

 * It is applicable to all PMUs and not just the ones supporting
   instruction tracing.
 * No option to restrict kernel mode instruction tracing by the
   root user.
 * Not possible to restrict kernel mode instruction tracing when the
   hardware assisted tracing IPs like ARM Coresight ETMs use an
   additional interface via sysfs for tracing in addition to perf
   interface.

So introduce a new config CONFIG_EXCLUDE_KERNEL_HW_ITRACE to exclude
kernel mode instruction tracing which will be generic and applicable
to all hardware tracing families and which can also be used with other
interfaces like sysfs in case of ETMs.

Patch 1 adds this new config and the support in perf core to exclude
kernel mode tracing for PMUs which support instruction mode tracing.

Patch 2 adds the perf evsel warning message when the perf tool users
attempt to perform a kernel mode instruction trace with the config
enabled to exclude the kernel mode tracing.

Patch 3 and Patch 4 adds the support for excluding kernel mode for
ARM Coresight ETM{4,3}XX sysfs mode using the newly introduced generic
config.

[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/796866/

Sai Prakash Ranjan (4):
  perf/core: Add support to exclude kernel mode instruction tracing
  perf evsel: Print warning for excluding kernel mode instruction
    tracing
  coresight: etm4x: Add support to exclude kernel mode tracing
  coresight: etm3x: Add support to exclude kernel mode tracing

 drivers/hwtracing/coresight/coresight-etm3x-core.c | 11 +++++++++++
 .../hwtracing/coresight/coresight-etm3x-sysfs.c    |  3 ++-
 drivers/hwtracing/coresight/coresight-etm4x-core.c | 14 +++++++++++++-
 .../hwtracing/coresight/coresight-etm4x-sysfs.c    |  3 ++-
 init/Kconfig                                       | 12 ++++++++++++
 kernel/events/core.c                               |  6 ++++++
 tools/perf/util/evsel.c                            |  3 ++-
 7 files changed, 48 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)