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uderef-SMAP.txt
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uderef-SMAP.txt
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With the latest release of their Architecture Instruction Set Extensions
Programming Reference Intel has finally lifted the veil on a new CPU feature
to debut in next year's Haswell line of processors. This new feature is
called Supervisor Mode Access Prevention (SMAP) and there's a reason why
its name so closely resembles Supervisor Mode Execution Prevention (SMEP),
the feature that debuted with Ivy Bridge processors a few months ago. While the
purpose of SMEP was to control instruction fetches and code execution from
supervisor mode (traditionally used by the kernel component of operating
systems), SMAP is concerned with data accesses from supervisor mode.
In particular, SMEP, when enabled, prevents code execution from userland memory
pages by the kernel (the favourite exploit technique against kernel security
bugs), whereas SMAP will prevent unintended data accesses to userland memory.
The twist in the story and the reason why these security features couldn't be
implemented as one lies in the fact that the kernel does have legitimate need
to access data in userland memory at times while no contemporary kernel needs
to execute code from there. In other words, while SMEP can be enabled
unconditionally by flipping a bit at boot time, SMAP needs more care because it
has to be disabled/enabled around legitimate accessor functions in the kernel.
Intel has added two new instructions for this very purpose (CLAC/STAC) and
repurposed the alignment check status bit in supervisor mode to enable quick
switching around SMAP at runtime. This will require more extensive changes in
kernel code than SMEP did but the amount of code is still quite managable.
Third party kernel modules that don't use the kernel's userland accessor
functions will have to take care of switching SMAP on/off themselves.
What does SMAP mean for PaX? The situation is similar to last year's SMEP that
made efficient implementation of (partial) KERNEXEC possible on amd64
(i386/KERNEXEC continues to rely on segmentation instead which provides better
protection than SMEP can). SMAP's analog feature in PaX is called UDEREF
which so far couldn't be efficiently implemented on amd64 (once again,
i386/UDEREF will continue to rely on segmentation to provide better
userland/kernel separation than SMAP can). Beyond allowing an efficient
implementation of UDEREF there'll be other uses for SMAP (or perhaps a future
variant of it) in PaX: sealed kernel memory whose access is carefully controlled
even for kernel code itself.
What does SMAP mean for security? Similarly to UDEREF, an SMAP enabled kernel
will be prevented from accessing userland memory in unintended ways, e.g.,
attacker controlled pointers can no longer target userland memory directly, but
even simple kernel bugs such as NULL pointer based dereferences will just
trigger a CPU exception instead of letting the attacker take over kernel data
flow. Coupled with SMEP this means that future exploits against memory
corruption bugs will have to entirely rely on targeting kernel memory (which has
been the case under UDEREF/KERNEXEC for many years now). This of course means
that for reliable exploitation detailed knowledge of runtime kernel memory will
become a premium, therefore abusing bugs that leak kernel memory to userland
will become the first step towards exploiting memory corruption bugs.
While UDEREF and SMAP prevent gratuitous memory leaks, they still have to allow
intended userland accesses and that is exactly the escape hatch that several
exploits have already targeted and we can expect more in the future. Fortunately
we are once again at the forefront of this game with several features that
prevent or at least greatly reduce the amount of informaton that can be so
leaked from the kernel to userland (HIDESYM, SANITIZE, SIZE_OVERFLOW, STACKLEAK,
USERCOPY).
TL;DR: Intel implements UDEREF equivalent 6 years after PaX, PaX will make use
of it on amd64 for improved performance.