[alsa-devel] [PATCH] ALSA: isa/wavefront: Fix potential Spectre v1 vulnerabilities

[Takashi Iwai]

On Thu, 20 Dec 2018 18:13:31 +0100,
Gustavo A. R. Silva wrote:
> 
> On 12/20/18 2:11 AM, Takashi Iwai wrote:
> > On Thu, 20 Dec 2018 00:31:43 +0100,
> >   Gustavo A. R. Silva  wrote:
> >>
> >> header->number is indirectly controlled by user-space, hence leading
> >> to a potential exploitation of the Spectre variant 1 vulnerability.
> >>
> >> This issue was detected with the help of Smatch:
> >>
> >> sound/isa/wavefront/wavefront_synth.c:792 wavefront_send_patch() warn: potential spectre issue 'dev->patch_status' [w] (local cap)
> >> sound/isa/wavefront/wavefront_synth.c:819 wavefront_send_program() warn: potential spectre issue 'dev->prog_status' [w] (local cap)
> >> sound/isa/wavefront/wavefront_synth.c:1197 wavefront_send_alias() warn: potential spectre issue 'dev->sample_status' [w]
> >> sound/isa/wavefront/wavefront_synth.c:1248 wavefront_send_multisample() warn: potential spectre issue 'dev->sample_status' [w]
> >> sound/isa/wavefront/wavefront_synth.c:1548 wavefront_synth_control() warn: potential spectre issue 'dev->sample_status' [r] (local cap)
> >>
> >> Fix this by sanitizing header->number before using it to index
> >> dev->patch_status, dev->prog_status and dev->sample_status.
> >>
> >> Notice that given that speculation windows are large, the policy is
> >> to kill the speculation on the first load and not worry if it can be
> >> completed with a dependent load/store [1].
> >>
> >> [1] https://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=152449131114778&w=2
> >>
> >> Cc: stable at vger.kernel.org
> >> Signed-off-by: Gustavo A. R. Silva <gustavo at embeddedor.com>
> >
> > Is there any platform with ISA slot that suffers from Spectre?
> >
> >
> 
> Do you mean 'any other'?

Well, no, my question is whether it makes sense to patch the code path
for such ISA drivers.  Spectre seems applicable since the model around
2006 or so, and ISA slot has been already dead for very long time.
And yet with this minor board...  I bet no one hits this in the
world.


thanks,

Takashi