Commit c2d1a135 authored by Jason Yan's avatar Jason Yan Committed by Michael Ellerman
Browse files

powerpc/fsl_booke/32: Document KASLR implementation



Add document to explain how we implement KASLR for fsl_booke32.

Signed-off-by: default avatarJason Yan <yanaijie@huawei.com>
Signed-off-by: default avatarScott Wood <oss@buserror.net>
[mpe: Add it to the index as well]
Signed-off-by: default avatarMichael Ellerman <mpe@ellerman.id.au>
parent 74277f00
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@@ -19,6 +19,7 @@ powerpc
    firmware-assisted-dump
    hvcs
    isa-versions
    kaslr-booke32
    mpc52xx
    pci_iov_resource_on_powernv
    pmu-ebb
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.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0

===========================
KASLR for Freescale BookE32
===========================

The word KASLR stands for Kernel Address Space Layout Randomization.

This document tries to explain the implementation of the KASLR for
Freescale BookE32. KASLR is a security feature that deters exploit
attempts relying on knowledge of the location of kernel internals.

Since CONFIG_RELOCATABLE has already supported, what we need to do is
map or copy kernel to a proper place and relocate. Freescale Book-E
parts expect lowmem to be mapped by fixed TLB entries(TLB1). The TLB1
entries are not suitable to map the kernel directly in a randomized
region, so we chose to copy the kernel to a proper place and restart to
relocate.

Entropy is derived from the banner and timer base, which will change every
build and boot. This not so much safe so additionally the bootloader may
pass entropy via the /chosen/kaslr-seed node in device tree.

We will use the first 512M of the low memory to randomize the kernel
image. The memory will be split in 64M zones. We will use the lower 8
bit of the entropy to decide the index of the 64M zone. Then we chose a
16K aligned offset inside the 64M zone to put the kernel in::

    KERNELBASE

        |-->   64M   <--|
        |               |
        +---------------+    +----------------+---------------+
        |               |....|    |kernel|    |               |
        +---------------+    +----------------+---------------+
        |                         |
        |----->   offset    <-----|

                              kernstart_virt_addr

To enable KASLR, set CONFIG_RANDOMIZE_BASE = y. If KASLR is enable and you
want to disable it at runtime, add "nokaslr" to the kernel cmdline.