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-This document explains potential effects of speculation, and how undesirable
-effects can be mitigated portably using common APIs.
-
-===========
-Speculation
-===========
-
-To improve performance and minimize average latencies, many contemporary CPUs
-employ speculative execution techniques such as branch prediction, performing
-work which may be discarded at a later stage.
-
-Typically speculative execution cannot be observed from architectural state,
-such as the contents of registers. However, in some cases it is possible to
-observe its impact on microarchitectural state, such as the presence or
-absence of data in caches. Such state may form side-channels which can be
-observed to extract secret information.
-
-For example, in the presence of branch prediction, it is possible for bounds
-checks to be ignored by code which is speculatively executed. Consider the
-following code::
-
- int load_array(int *array, unsigned int index)
- {
- if (index >= MAX_ARRAY_ELEMS)
- return 0;
- else
- return array[index];
- }
-
-Which, on arm64, may be compiled to an assembly sequence such as::
-
- CMP <index>, #MAX_ARRAY_ELEMS
- B.LT less
- MOV <returnval>, #0
- RET
- less:
- LDR <returnval>, [<array>, <index>]
- RET
-
-It is possible that a CPU mis-predicts the conditional branch, and
-speculatively loads array[index], even if index >= MAX_ARRAY_ELEMS. This
-value will subsequently be discarded, but the speculated load may affect
-microarchitectural state which can be subsequently measured.
-
-More complex sequences involving multiple dependent memory accesses may
-result in sensitive information being leaked. Consider the following
-code, building on the prior example::
-
- int load_dependent_arrays(int *arr1, int *arr2, int index)
- {
- int val1, val2,
-
- val1 = load_array(arr1, index);
- val2 = load_array(arr2, val1);
-
- return val2;
- }
-
-Under speculation, the first call to load_array() may return the value
-of an out-of-bounds address, while the second call will influence
-microarchitectural state dependent on this value. This may provide an
-arbitrary read primitive.
-
-====================================
-Mitigating speculation side-channels
-====================================
-
-The kernel provides a generic API to ensure that bounds checks are
-respected even under speculation. Architectures which are affected by
-speculation-based side-channels are expected to implement these
-primitives.
-
-The array_index_nospec() helper in <linux/nospec.h> can be used to
-prevent information from being leaked via side-channels.
-
-A call to array_index_nospec(index, size) returns a sanitized index
-value that is bounded to [0, size) even under cpu speculation
-conditions.
-
-This can be used to protect the earlier load_array() example::
-
- int load_array(int *array, unsigned int index)
- {
- if (index >= MAX_ARRAY_ELEMS)
- return 0;
- else {
- index = array_index_nospec(index, MAX_ARRAY_ELEMS);
- return array[index];
- }
- }