• Mimi Zohar's avatar
    ima: based on policy warn about loading firmware (pre-allocated buffer) · 4f0496d8
    Mimi Zohar authored
    Some systems are memory constrained but they need to load very large
    firmwares.  The firmware subsystem allows drivers to request this
    firmware be loaded from the filesystem, but this requires that the
    entire firmware be loaded into kernel memory first before it's provided
    to the driver.  This can lead to a situation where we map the firmware
    twice, once to load the firmware into kernel memory and once to copy the
    firmware into the final resting place.
    
    To resolve this problem, commit a098ecd2 ("firmware: support loading
    into a pre-allocated buffer") introduced request_firmware_into_buf() API
    that allows drivers to request firmware be loaded directly into a
    pre-allocated buffer.
    
    Do devices using pre-allocated memory run the risk of the firmware being
    accessible to the device prior to the completion of IMA's signature
    verification any more than when using two buffers? (Refer to mailing list
    discussion[1]).
    
    Only on systems with an IOMMU can the access be prevented.  As long as
    the signature verification completes prior to the DMA map is performed,
    the device can not access the buffer.  This implies that the same buffer
    can not be re-used.  Can we ensure the buffer has not been DMA mapped
    before using the pre-allocated buffer?
    
    [1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/7/10/56Signed-off-by: default avatarMimi Zohar <zohar@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
    Cc: Luis R. Rodriguez <mcgrof@suse.com>
    Cc: Stephen Boyd <sboyd@kernel.org>
    Cc: Bjorn Andersson <bjorn.andersson@linaro.org>
    Cc: Ard Biesheuvel <ard.biesheuvel@linaro.org>
    Reviewed-by: default avatarKees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarJames Morris <james.morris@microsoft.com>
    4f0496d8
ima_main.c 15.7 KB