Thanks Raghu.

I agree that this patch reduces the attack surface and would be a good addition, if we consider use cases where EL3 code runs in a silo. Since S-EL1 can contain any third party code, there is an opportunity to change memory contents without EL3 ever noticing the change. A hash for the RO page tables would improve this change immensely IMO.

This change is not effective for platforms that use dynamic page tables e.g. Tegra platforms, so we won't be enabling it. But if other maintainers think this is a good addition to their platforms, I don’t have any objection.

-----Original Message----- From: TF-A tf-a-bounces@lists.trustedfirmware.org On Behalf Of Raghu Krishnamurthy via TF-A Sent: Monday, February 17, 2020 4:16 PM To: tf-a@lists.trustedfirmware.org Subject: Re: [TF-A] Protecting Secure World Translation Tables

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I think it is worth implementing this to raise the bar for successful attacks. To Varun's point, in today's systems without S-EL2(<v8.4), it would be less effective as pointed out, since EL3 memory can be completely accessed by SEL1 and SEL1 code tends to have a larger code base on mobile devices(OPTEE, tlk etc). However, on systems with very thin SEL1 shims(typically servers), this would definitely raise the bar for attacks, since you effectively only have SEL0 and EL3. SEL1 cannot be exploited practically.

For new SoCs with SEL2, this mitigation can still be very effective if we can ensure future SEL2 implementations have much smaller code bases and implements this mitigation itself. Effectively, i view SEL2 and EL3 as being equally privileged(it is no different than SEL1 because SEL2 can barf all over EL3 memory and TZ resources if exploited). SEL2 extensions, however, gives EL3 protection from SEL1 and can prevent SEL1 from accessing ALL TZ resources. If you view SEL2 and EL3 as equally privileged and view both together as a single entity, v8.4 systems effectively have EL3, SEL1, SEL0 AND the ability for EL3 to protect itself and other TZ resources from SEL1. In such a system, EL3(and SEL2) having this mitigation will definitely raise the bar for successful attacks.

Also, the cost to implement this mitigation is relatively low for a fairly significant raise in the bar for successful attacks.

PS - I say significantly raise the bar since an attacker will potentially require gadgets to modify TTBRx, invalidate TLB's, and enough gadgets in the code base to have a successful attack. If code in TF-A EL3 is fairly small, and code that writes to TTBR_EL3 can be in some section of the image that can be reclaimed/erased after initial setup, the attacker would have no gadget to modify TTBR_EL3, so there would be virtually no way to change TTBR_EL3. On a default build of FVP, there is a grand total of 1 instruction that writes to TTBR0_EL3 in enable_mmu_direct_el3. This might be a nice follow up change to this mitigation, if others think it is worth it. The same could be extended to other system registers that don't ever need to be changed(VBAR_EL3? SCTLR_EL3?).

Thanks Raghu

On 2/17/20 12:35 PM, Varun Wadekar via TF-A wrote:

Hello Petre,

Thanks for the patch. Before I review the actual code, would like to understand how effective this patch will be and if you have seen a real world attack that this patch mitigates.

AFAIU, the ARM architecture provides the TZ bit as the only protection to create "partitions" on a CPU core. So, potentially S-EL1 can access almost all TZ resources that EL3 can access. Thus, creating a silo inside EL3 exception mode is not an effective mitigation against any other TZ component writing to the physical memory where the page tables are stored. For the scope of this attack vector, are we assuming that the system cannot be compromised by attacking other TZ software components in the system?

I feel until we have a way to distinguish between CPU realms (EL3 v S-EL2 v S-EL1) at the hardware bus level (ARM v9?), these mitigations are not that effective.

Thoughts?

-Varun

-----Original Message----- From: TF-A tf-a-bounces@lists.trustedfirmware.org On Behalf Of Petre-Ionut Tudor via TF-A Sent: Monday, February 17, 2020 9:40 AM To: tf-a@lists.trustedfirmware.org Subject: [TF-A] Protecting Secure World Translation Tables

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Hello Everyone,

For quite some time I have been working on a security hardening feature that offers extra protection against tampering with the Secure world translation tables. An example would be using a gadget that can perform writes to arbitrary Secure memory locations to change memory attributes and/or the memory map.

A real world exploit that uses read/write gadgets to tamper with translation tables can be found here: https://vimeo.com/335948808. If you only want the slide deck, it's available here: https://speakerdeck.com/hhj4ck/el3-tour-get-the-ultimate-privilege-of-androi....

A patch implementing this feature has been recently pushed upstream here: https://review.trustedfirmware.org/c/TF-A/trusted-firmware-a/+/3349. It extends v2 of the translation tables library with an API that can be called by a BL image any time after the initialization of the xlat tables to make them read-only.

It would be great to hear your opinions about this, particularly whether or not it is a desirable feature to have in TF-A and what extra work needs to be done for it to meet the use cases that you consider most relevant.

Best wishes Petre IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the information in any medium. Thank you. -- TF-A mailing list TF-A@lists.trustedfirmware.org https://lists.trustedfirmware.org/mailman/listinfo/tf-a

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