Re: [PATCH] x86/ibt: Implement FineIBT

From: Peter Zijlstra
Date: Tue Oct 18 2022 - 16:05:23 EST


On Tue, Oct 18, 2022 at 11:09:13AM -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
> I still think it's worth noting it does technically weaken the
> "attacker-controlled executable memory content injection" attack
> requirements, too. While an attacker needs to make sure they place an
> ENDBR at the start of their injected code, they no longer need to also
> learn and inject the CFI hash too, as the malicious code can just not
> do the check at all. The difference in protection currently isn't much.

Hmm, true; although I do feel that the moment attackers can write code
we might be having worse problems.

> It's not a very difficult requirement to get attacker-controlled bytes
> into executable memory, as there are already existing APIs that provide
> this to varying degrees of reachability, utility, and discoverability --
> for example, BPF JIT when constant blinding isn't enabled (the unfortunate
> default).

BPF has another problem in that the current control transfer to BPF
progs is nocfi. At the very least we can have them have a hash, no?