<div dir="ltr">Hi everyone!<div><br></div><div>I want to clarify the purpose and design of SESES. Thus far, I've characterized it as an LVI mitigation which is somewhat incorrect.</div><div><br></div><div>SESES was built as a "big hammer." It is intended to protect against many side channel vulnerabilities (Spectre v1, Spectre v4, LVI, etc, etc) even though it was built in response to LVI.</div><div><br></div><div>For folks protecting against LVI, this is an option for mitigation. This is also an option for folks who want to try to mitigate against speculative execution vulnerabilities as a whole and who don't have high performance needs. As mentioned in the documentation this is not necessarily foolproof, but it's as close as we can get to closing all side channels. </div><div><br></div><div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr">Zola Bridges</div></div></div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, Mar 18, 2020 at 2:03 PM Zola Bridges <<a href="mailto:zbrid@google.com">zbrid@google.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">Hi everyone,<div><br></div><div>Scott and I have been working to make our patches upstreamable. I'd like to hear more feedback.</div><div><br></div><div>I would only upstream my patches if the community felt it would be beneficial/desirable. It would be nice to have more discussion to make it easier to make a decision within the next week or two.</div><div><br></div><div>What are your thoughts on the following topics?</div><div><ul><li>Should SESES be upstreamed? Are there any concerns about upstreaming it?</li><ul><li><a href="https://reviews.llvm.org/D75939" style="text-decoration-line:none" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">https://reviews.llvm.org/D75939</span></a><br></li></ul><li>Should Scott's approach be upstreamed? Are there any concerns about upstreaming it?</li><ul><li><a href="https://reviews.llvm.org/D75937" target="_blank">https://reviews.llvm.org/D75937</a><br></li><li><a href="http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2020-March/139842.html" style="text-decoration-line:none" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2020-March/139842.html</span></a><br></li></ul><li>Are there reasons to upstream both approaches?</li><li>Are there reasons against upstreaming both approaches?</li></ul><div>I'm particularly interested in hearing from folks who may use one of these mitigations. </div><div><br></div><div>For example, Jethro from Fortanix provided feedback (in the #backends Discord channel) that he would be most interested in seeing Scott approach upstreamed due to the performance advantage.</div><div><br></div><div>Thanks!</div><div><br></div><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">Zola Bridges</div></div></div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 10:23 AM Zola Bridges <<a href="mailto:zbrid@google.com" target="_blank">zbrid@google.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><span id="gmail-m_6214975041495558651gmail-m_-3808463183354424134gmail-docs-internal-guid-1e273e3f-7fff-89b3-a19c-e9e3cd6d4dc8"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Hi everyone,</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Some Intel processors have a newly disclosed vulnerability named Load Value Injection.</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">One pager on Load Value Injection:</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><a href="https://software.intel.com/security-software-guidance/software-guidance/load-value-injection" style="text-decoration-line:none" target="_blank"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;color:rgb(26,115,232);font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"><font face="arial, sans-serif">https://software.intel.com/security-software-guidance/software-guidance/load-value-injection</font></span></a></p><font face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"><font face="arial, sans-serif">Deep dive on Load Value Injection:</font></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="text-decoration-line:none;font-size:10.5pt;color:rgb(26,115,232);font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><a href="https://software.intel.com/security-software-guidance/insights/deep-dive-load-value-injection" style="text-decoration-line:none" target="_blank">https://software.intel.com/security-software-guidance/insights/deep-dive-load-value-injection</a> </font></span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">I wrote this compiler pass that can be used as a last resort mitigation. This pass is based on ideas from Chandler Carruth and Intel. This pass is primarily intended to share with the community as a basis for experimentation and may not be production ready. We are open to upstreaming this pass if there is interest from the community. It can be removed if it becomes a maintenance burden.</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Intel has also created a mitigation that they have shared: </span><a href="http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2020-March/139842.html" style="text-decoration-line:none" target="_blank"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2020-March/139842.html</span></a></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">We look forward to sharing information and ideas about both.</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">The documentation in this email lists the performance I saw for variants of the mitigation that are potential optimizations for Load Value Injection. The flags can be used to turn on optimization techniques for different builds. They are turned off by default. Each variant is not guaranteed to be as secure as the full mitigation.</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Here is a link to the first patch: </span><a href="https://reviews.llvm.org/D75939" style="text-decoration-line:none" target="_blank"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">https://reviews.llvm.org/D75939</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Here is a link to the documentation patch: </span><a href="https://reviews.llvm.org/D75940" style="text-decoration-line:none" target="_blank"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">https://reviews.llvm.org/D75940</span></a></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Links to other related patches</span></p><ul style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><a href="https://reviews.llvm.org/D75941" style="text-decoration-line:none" target="_blank"><span style="font-size:11pt;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">https://reviews.llvm.org/D75941</span></a></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><a href="https://reviews.llvm.org/D75942" style="text-decoration-line:none" target="_blank"><span style="font-size:11pt;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">https://reviews.llvm.org/D75942</span></a></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><a href="https://reviews.llvm.org/D75944" style="text-decoration-line:none" target="_blank"><span style="font-size:11pt;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">https://reviews.llvm.org/D75944</span></a></p></li></ul><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">I'd like to request comments, feedback, and discussion. </span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Beyond that, we would also like guidance on whether to upstream this pass.</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Thanks,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Zola Bridges</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:700;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">From the documentation: Overview of the mitigation</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">As the name suggests, the "speculative execution side effect suppression" mitigation aims to prevent any effects of speculative execution from escaping into the microarchitectural domain where they could be observed, thereby closing off side channel information leaks.</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">In the case of Load Value Injection, we assume that speculative loads from memory (due to explicit memory access instructions or control flow instructions like RET) may receive injected data due to address aliasing, and we ensure these injected values are not allowed to steer later speculative memory accesses to impact cache contents.</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">The mitigation is implemented as a compiler pass that inserts a speculation barrier (LFENCE) just before:</span></p><ul style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Each memory read instruction</span></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Each memory write instruction</span></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">The first branch instruction in a group of terminators at the end of a basic block</span></p></li></ul><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">This is something of a last-resort mitigation: it is expected to have </span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-style:italic;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">extreme</span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"> performance implications and it may not be a </span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-style:italic;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">complete</span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"> mitigation because it relies on enumerating specific side channel mechanisms. However, it is applicable to more variants and styles of gadgets that can reach speculative execution side channels than just traditional Spectre Variant 1 gadgets which speculative load hardening (SLH) targets much more narrowly but more efficiently.</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">While there is a slight risk that this mitigation will be ineffective against future side channels, we believe there is still significant value in closing two side channel classes that are most actively exploited today: control-flow based (branch predictor or icache) and cache timing. Control flow side channels are closed by preventing speculative execution into conditionals and indirect branches. Cache timing side channels are closed by preventing speculative execution of reads and writes.</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">We believe this mitigation will be most useful in situations where code is handling extremely sensitive secrets that must not leak, and where a hit to performance is tolerable in service of that overriding goal. As we've mentioned, the original target of this mitigation was the threat of LVI against SGX enclaves instrumenting critically important secrets.</span></p></span><br></div>
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