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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 13:37:31 -0800
commit711c7064697796e9171f3ce0382a94a116ecae14 (patch)
tree9eff7b111fb64c101cad136dd8bd88f7acf8eeef
parent7d6b6f2c1aac1be65eb5670d7b4861cffcc16cd5 (diff)
arm64: Kconfig: Reword UNMAP_KERNEL_AT_EL0 kconfig entryASB-2018-01-05_4.4-n-release
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 f8d4216e3fcf..0727e05b66c0 100644
--- a/arch/arm64/Kconfig
+++ b/arch/arm64/Kconfig
@@ -640,15 +640,14 @@ config FORCE_MAX_ZONEORDER
4M allocations matching the default size used by generic code.
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.