[PATCH v2] drm: enable render-nodes by default

Thomas Hellstrom thellstrom at vmware.com
Thu Mar 20 13:54:23 PDT 2014


On 03/20/2014 06:34 PM, Rob Clark wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 6:28 AM, Thomas Hellstrom <thellstrom at vmware.com> wrote:
>> On 03/20/2014 10:43 AM, David Herrmann wrote:
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 10:27 AM, Thomas Hellstrom
>>> <thellstrom at vmware.com> wrote:
>>>> A user logs in to a system where DRI clients use render nodes. The
>>>> system grants rw permission on the render nodes for the console user.
>>>> User starts editing a secret document, starts some GPGPU structural FEM
>>>> computations of  the Pentagon building. Locks the screen and goes for lunch.
>>>>
>>>> A malicious user logs in using fast user switching and becomes the owner
>>>> of the render node. Tries to map a couple of random offsets, but that
>>>> fails, due to security checks. Now crafts a malicious command stream to
>>>> dump all GPU memory to a file. Steals the first user's secret document
>>>> and the intermediate Pentagon data. Logs out and starts data mining.
>>>>
>>>> Now if we require drivers to block these malicious command streams this
>>>> can never happen, and distros can reliably grant rw access to the render
>>>> nodes to the user currently logged into the console.
>>>>
>>>> I guest basically what I'm trying to say that with the legacy concept it
>>>> was OK to access all GPU memory, because an authenticated X user
>>>> basically had the same permissions.
>>>>
>>>> With render nodes we're allowing multiple users into the GPU at the same
>>>> time, and it's not OK anymore for a client to access another clients GPU
>>>> buffer through a malicious command stream.
>>> Yes, I understand the attack scenario, but that's not related to
>>> render-nodes at all. The exact same races exist on the legacy node:
>> I was under the impression that render nodes were designed to fix these
>> issues?
>>
>>> 1) If you can do fast-user switching, you can spawn your own X-server,
>>> get authenticated on your own server and you are allowed into the GPU.
>>> You cannot map other user's buffers because they're on a different
>>> master-object, but you _can_ craft malicious GPU streams and access
>>> the other user's buffer.
>> But with legacy nodes, drivers can (and should IMO) throw out all data
>> from GPU memory on master drop,
>> and then block dropped master authenticated clients from GPU, until
>> their master becomes active again or dies (in which case they are
>> killed). In line with a previous discussion we had. Now you can't do
>> this with render nodes, so yes they do open up
>> a new race that requires command stream validation.
>>
>>> 2) If you can do fast-user switching, switch to an empty VT, open the
>>> legacy node and you automatically become DRM-Master because there is
>>> no active master. Now you can do anything on the DRM node, including
>>> crafting malicious GPU streams.
>> I believe the above solution should work for this case as well.
>>
>>> Given that the legacy node is always around and _always_ has these
>>> races, why should we prevent render-nodes from appearing just because
>>> the _driver_ is racy? I mean, there is no gain in that.. if it opens a
>>> new race, as you assumed, then yes, we should avoid it. But at least
>>> for all drivers supporting render-nodes so far, they either are
>>> entirely safe or the just described races exist on both nodes.
>> My suggestion is actually not to prevent render nodes from appearing,
>> but rather that we should restrict them to drivers with command stream
>> verification and / or per process virtual memory, and I also think we
>> should plug the above races on legacy nodes. That way legacy nodes would
>> use the old "master owns it all" model, while render nodes could allow
>> multiple users at the same time.
>>
> hmm, if you only have global gpu virtual memory (rather than
> per-process), it would still be kinda nice to support render nodes if
> app had some way to figure out whether or not it's gpu buffers were
> secure.

If there is only global GPU memory there's of course also the option of
providing a
command stream verifier.

> Ie. an app that was using the gpu for something secure could
> simply choose not to if the hw/driver could not guarantee that another
> process using the gpu could not get access to the buffers..

IMO that should work fine, but we need to provide a way for user-space
to determine whether
the render node is secure or not. Perhaps a sysfs attribute and / or a
drm getparam() parameter?

/Thomas


>
> BR,
> -R
>
>> /Thomas
>> _______________________________________________
>> dri-devel mailing list
>> dri-devel at lists.freedesktop.org
>> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel&k=oIvRg1%2BdGAgOoM1BIlLLqw%3D%3D%0A&r=l5Ago9ekmVFZ3c4M6eauqrJWGwjf6fTb%2BP3CxbBFkVM%3D%0A&m=FdvSEw9pF7e8FqQQ9dlatoXG%2BSm0ueWrIhyOeI%2BOc64%3D%0A&s=926ef90112ced9636ddbf2873c3770bdf06ca244ec32744fe33e478b93e0d695


More information about the dri-devel mailing list