Documentation: Add technote/design doc for mitigating ReBAR issue

Change-Id: Icba9d7910dfd46f32a2c46b6fd064a9cc8e3beac
Signed-off-by: Patrick Georgi <pgeorgi@chromium.org>
Reviewed-on: https://review.coreboot.org/19242
Tested-by: build bot (Jenkins)
Reviewed-by: Stefan Reinauer <stefan.reinauer@coreboot.org>

1 files changed, 136 insertions, 0 deletions

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+Dealing with Untrusted Input in SMM
+===================================
+
+Objective
+---------
+Intel Security recently held a talk and published
+[slides](http://www.intelsecurity.com/advanced-threat-research/content/data/REConBrussels2017_BARing_the_system.pdf)
+on a vulnerability in SMM handlers on x86 systems. They provide examples
+on how both UEFI and coreboot are affected.
+
+Background
+----------
+SMM, the System Management Mode, is a CPU mode that is configured by
+firmware and survives the system’s initialization phase. On certain
+events that mode can be triggered and executes code, suspending the
+current processing that is going on the CPU, no matter whether it’s
+in kernel or user space.
+
+In SMM, the CPU has access to memory dedicated to that mode (SMRAM) that
+is normally inaccessible, and typically some restrictions are lifted as
+well (eg. in some configurations, certain flash write protection registers
+are writable in SMM only).  This makes SMM a target for attacks which
+seek to elevate a ring0 (kernel) exploit to something permanent.
+
+Overview
+--------
+Intel Security showed several places in coreboot’s SMM handler (Slides
+32+) that could be manipulated into writing data at user-chosen addresses
+(SMRAM or otherwise), by modifying the BAR (Base Address Register) on
+certain devices. By picking the right addresses and the right events
+(and with them, mutators on the data at these addresses), it might
+be possible to change the SMM handler itself to call into regular RAM
+(where other code resides that then can work with elevated privileges).
+
+Their proposed mitigations (Slide 37) revolve around making sure
+that the BAR entries are reasonable, and point to a device instead of
+regular memory or SMRAM. They’re not very detailed on how this could
+be implemented, which is what this document discusses.
+
+Detailed Design
+---------------
+The attack works because the SMM handler trusts the results of the
+`pci_read_config32(dev, reg)` function, even though the value read by that
+function can be modified in kernel mode.
+
+In the general case it’s not possible to keep the cached value from
+system initialization because there are legitimate modifications the
+kernel can do to these values, so the only remedy is to make sure that
+the value isn’t totally off.
+
+For applications where hardware changes are limited by design (eg. no
+user-modifiable PCIe slots) and where the running kernel is known,
+such as Chromebooks, further efforts include caching the BAR settings
+at initialization time and comparing later accesses to that.
+
+What "totally off" means is chipset specific because it requires
+knowledge of the memory map as seen by the memory controller: which
+addresses are routed to devices, which are handled by the memory
+controller itself?
+The proposal is that in SMM, the `pci_read_config` functions (which
+aren’t timing critical) _always_ validate the value read from a given
+set of registers (the BARs) and fail hard (ie. cold reset, potentially
+after logging the event) if they’re invalid (because that points to
+a severe kernel bug or an attack).
+The actual validation is done by a function implemented by the chipset code.
+
+Another validation that can be done is to make sure that the BAR has the
+appropriate bits set so it is enabled and points to memory (instead of
+IO space).
+
+In terms of implementation, this might look somewhat as follows. There
+are a bunch of blanks to fill in, in particular how to handle the actual
+config space access and there will be more registers that need to be
+checked for correctness, both official BARs (0-4) and per-chipset
+registers that need to be blacklisted in another chipset specific
+function:
+
+```c
+static inline __attribute__((always_inline))
+uint32_t pci_read_config32[d](pci_devfn_t dev, unsigned int where)
+{
+	uint32_t val = real_pci_read_config32(dev, where);
+	if (IS_ENABLED(__SMM__) && (where == PCI_BASE_ADDRESS_0) &&
+		is_mmio_ptr(dev, where) && !is_address_in_mmio(val)) {
+			cold_reset();
+	}
+	return val;
+}
+```
+
+`is_address_in_mmio(addr)` would be a newly introduced function to be
+implemented by chipset drivers that returns true if the passed address
+points into whatever is considered valid MMIO space.
+`is_mmio_ptr(dev, where)` returns true for PCI config space registers that
+point to BARs (allowing custom overrides because sometimes additional
+registers are used to point to addresses).
+
+For this function what is considered a legal address needs to be
+documented, in accordance with the chipset design. (For example: AMD
+K8 has a bunch of registers that define strictly which addresses are
+"MMIO")
+
+### Fully insured (aka “paranoid”) mode
+For systems with more control over the hardware and kernel (such as
+Chromebooks), it may be possible to set up the BARs in a way that the
+kernel isn’t compelled to rewrite them, and store these values for
+later comparison.
+
+This avoids attacks such as setting the BAR to point to another device’s
+MMIO region which the above method can’t catch. Such a configuration
+would be “illegal”, but depending on the evaluation order of BARs
+in the chipset, this might effectively only disable the device used for
+the attack, while still fooling the SMM handler.
+
+Since this method isn’t generalizable, it has to be an optional
+compile-time feature.
+
+Caveats
+-------
+This capability might need to be hidden behind a Kconfig flag
+because we won’t be able to provide functional implementations of
+`is_address_in_mmio()` for every chipset supported by coreboot from the
+start.
+
+Security Considerations
+-----------------------
+The actual exploitability of the issue is unknown, but fixing it serves
+as defense in depth, similar to the
+[Memory Sinkhole mitigation](https://review.coreboot.org/#/c/11519/) for
+older Intel chipsets.
+
+Testing Plan
+------------
+Manual testing can be conducted easily by creating a small payload that
+provokes the reaction. It should test all conditions that enable the
+address test (ie. the different BAR offsets if used by SMM handlers).