WARNING - OLD ARCHIVES

This is an archived copy of the Xen.org mailing list, which we have preserved to ensure that existing links to archives are not broken. The live archive, which contains the latest emails, can be found at http://lists.xen.org/
   
 
 
Xen 
 
Home Products Support Community News
 
   
 

xen-devel

Re: [Xen-devel] Is exposing shared_info to user-land secure?

To: "dan.magenheimer@xxxxxxxxxx" <dan.magenheimer@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Xen-devel] Is exposing shared_info to user-land secure?
From: Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2008 13:31:23 -0700
Cc: "Xen-Devel \(E-mail\)" <xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Delivery-date: Fri, 01 Aug 2008 13:31:48 -0700
Envelope-to: www-data@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In-reply-to: <20080801101339906.00000008444@djm-pc>
List-help: <mailto:xen-devel-request@lists.xensource.com?subject=help>
List-id: Xen developer discussion <xen-devel.lists.xensource.com>
List-post: <mailto:xen-devel@lists.xensource.com>
List-subscribe: <http://lists.xensource.com/mailman/listinfo/xen-devel>, <mailto:xen-devel-request@lists.xensource.com?subject=subscribe>
List-unsubscribe: <http://lists.xensource.com/mailman/listinfo/xen-devel>, <mailto:xen-devel-request@lists.xensource.com?subject=unsubscribe>
References: <20080801101339906.00000008444@djm-pc>
Sender: xen-devel-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 (X11/20080501)
Dan Magenheimer wrote:
Is it "safe" in a paravirtualized guest to expose shared_info
(at least read-only) to user-land?  That is, is there data
in shared_info that could be used by a malicious program to
compromise a guest OS (ignoring very complex side-channel
attacks anyway)?

We have apps that constantly do various time syscalls (e.g.
to gettimeofday()) and I'm thinking if vcpu_info(cpu)->time_info
was directly readable by an enterprise app, it could do
the time calculations itself and save the syscall overhead.

You can use the HYPERVISOR_vcpu_op(VCPUOP_register_vcpu_info, ) hypercall to move the vcpu structure out of the shared info structure; that could be placed somewhere mappable. Though currently I use it to put it into the percpu data area for quick kernel access; it definitely wouldn't be mappable by userspace there (well, not without padding it out to its own page, at least).

   J

_______________________________________________
Xen-devel mailing list
Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>