cachepc-linux

Fork of AMDESE/linux with modifications for CachePC side-channel attack
git clone https://git.sinitax.com/sinitax/cachepc-linux
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embargoed-hardware-issues.rst (13445B)


      1.. _embargoed_hardware_issues:
      2
      3Embargoed hardware issues
      4=========================
      5
      6Scope
      7-----
      8
      9Hardware issues which result in security problems are a different category
     10of security bugs than pure software bugs which only affect the Linux
     11kernel.
     12
     13Hardware issues like Meltdown, Spectre, L1TF etc. must be treated
     14differently because they usually affect all Operating Systems ("OS") and
     15therefore need coordination across different OS vendors, distributions,
     16hardware vendors and other parties. For some of the issues, software
     17mitigations can depend on microcode or firmware updates, which need further
     18coordination.
     19
     20.. _Contact:
     21
     22Contact
     23-------
     24
     25The Linux kernel hardware security team is separate from the regular Linux
     26kernel security team.
     27
     28The team only handles the coordination of embargoed hardware security
     29issues.  Reports of pure software security bugs in the Linux kernel are not
     30handled by this team and the reporter will be guided to contact the regular
     31Linux kernel security team (:ref:`Documentation/admin-guide/
     32<securitybugs>`) instead.
     33
     34The team can be contacted by email at <hardware-security@kernel.org>. This
     35is a private list of security officers who will help you to coordinate an
     36issue according to our documented process.
     37
     38The list is encrypted and email to the list can be sent by either PGP or
     39S/MIME encrypted and must be signed with the reporter's PGP key or S/MIME
     40certificate. The list's PGP key and S/MIME certificate are available from
     41the following URLs:
     42
     43  - PGP: https://www.kernel.org/static/files/hardware-security.asc
     44  - S/MIME: https://www.kernel.org/static/files/hardware-security.crt
     45
     46While hardware security issues are often handled by the affected hardware
     47vendor, we welcome contact from researchers or individuals who have
     48identified a potential hardware flaw.
     49
     50Hardware security officers
     51^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
     52
     53The current team of hardware security officers:
     54
     55  - Linus Torvalds (Linux Foundation Fellow)
     56  - Greg Kroah-Hartman (Linux Foundation Fellow)
     57  - Thomas Gleixner (Linux Foundation Fellow)
     58
     59Operation of mailing-lists
     60^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
     61
     62The encrypted mailing-lists which are used in our process are hosted on
     63Linux Foundation's IT infrastructure. By providing this service, members
     64of Linux Foundation's IT operations personnel technically have the
     65ability to access the embargoed information, but are obliged to
     66confidentiality by their employment contract. Linux Foundation IT
     67personnel are also responsible for operating and managing the rest of
     68kernel.org infrastructure.
     69
     70The Linux Foundation's current director of IT Project infrastructure is
     71Konstantin Ryabitsev.
     72
     73
     74Non-disclosure agreements
     75-------------------------
     76
     77The Linux kernel hardware security team is not a formal body and therefore
     78unable to enter into any non-disclosure agreements.  The kernel community
     79is aware of the sensitive nature of such issues and offers a Memorandum of
     80Understanding instead.
     81
     82
     83Memorandum of Understanding
     84---------------------------
     85
     86The Linux kernel community has a deep understanding of the requirement to
     87keep hardware security issues under embargo for coordination between
     88different OS vendors, distributors, hardware vendors and other parties.
     89
     90The Linux kernel community has successfully handled hardware security
     91issues in the past and has the necessary mechanisms in place to allow
     92community compliant development under embargo restrictions.
     93
     94The Linux kernel community has a dedicated hardware security team for
     95initial contact, which oversees the process of handling such issues under
     96embargo rules.
     97
     98The hardware security team identifies the developers (domain experts) who
     99will form the initial response team for a particular issue. The initial
    100response team can bring in further developers (domain experts) to address
    101the issue in the best technical way.
    102
    103All involved developers pledge to adhere to the embargo rules and to keep
    104the received information confidential. Violation of the pledge will lead to
    105immediate exclusion from the current issue and removal from all related
    106mailing-lists. In addition, the hardware security team will also exclude
    107the offender from future issues. The impact of this consequence is a highly
    108effective deterrent in our community. In case a violation happens the
    109hardware security team will inform the involved parties immediately. If you
    110or anyone becomes aware of a potential violation, please report it
    111immediately to the Hardware security officers.
    112
    113
    114Process
    115^^^^^^^
    116
    117Due to the globally distributed nature of Linux kernel development,
    118face-to-face meetings are almost impossible to address hardware security
    119issues.  Phone conferences are hard to coordinate due to time zones and
    120other factors and should be only used when absolutely necessary. Encrypted
    121email has been proven to be the most effective and secure communication
    122method for these types of issues.
    123
    124Start of Disclosure
    125"""""""""""""""""""
    126
    127Disclosure starts by contacting the Linux kernel hardware security team by
    128email. This initial contact should contain a description of the problem and
    129a list of any known affected hardware. If your organization builds or
    130distributes the affected hardware, we encourage you to also consider what
    131other hardware could be affected.
    132
    133The hardware security team will provide an incident-specific encrypted
    134mailing-list which will be used for initial discussion with the reporter,
    135further disclosure and coordination.
    136
    137The hardware security team will provide the disclosing party a list of
    138developers (domain experts) who should be informed initially about the
    139issue after confirming with the developers  that they will adhere to this
    140Memorandum of Understanding and the documented process. These developers
    141form the initial response team and will be responsible for handling the
    142issue after initial contact. The hardware security team is supporting the
    143response team, but is not necessarily involved in the mitigation
    144development process.
    145
    146While individual developers might be covered by a non-disclosure agreement
    147via their employer, they cannot enter individual non-disclosure agreements
    148in their role as Linux kernel developers. They will, however, agree to
    149adhere to this documented process and the Memorandum of Understanding.
    150
    151The disclosing party should provide a list of contacts for all other
    152entities who have already been, or should be, informed about the issue.
    153This serves several purposes:
    154
    155 - The list of disclosed entities allows communication across the
    156   industry, e.g. other OS vendors, HW vendors, etc.
    157
    158 - The disclosed entities can be contacted to name experts who should
    159   participate in the mitigation development.
    160
    161 - If an expert which is required to handle an issue is employed by an
    162   listed entity or member of an listed entity, then the response teams can
    163   request the disclosure of that expert from that entity. This ensures
    164   that the expert is also part of the entity's response team.
    165
    166Disclosure
    167""""""""""
    168
    169The disclosing party provides detailed information to the initial response
    170team via the specific encrypted mailing-list.
    171
    172From our experience the technical documentation of these issues is usually
    173a sufficient starting point and further technical clarification is best
    174done via email.
    175
    176Mitigation development
    177""""""""""""""""""""""
    178
    179The initial response team sets up an encrypted mailing-list or repurposes
    180an existing one if appropriate.
    181
    182Using a mailing-list is close to the normal Linux development process and
    183has been successfully used in developing mitigations for various hardware
    184security issues in the past.
    185
    186The mailing-list operates in the same way as normal Linux development.
    187Patches are posted, discussed and reviewed and if agreed on applied to a
    188non-public git repository which is only accessible to the participating
    189developers via a secure connection. The repository contains the main
    190development branch against the mainline kernel and backport branches for
    191stable kernel versions as necessary.
    192
    193The initial response team will identify further experts from the Linux
    194kernel developer community as needed. Bringing in experts can happen at any
    195time of the development process and needs to be handled in a timely manner.
    196
    197If an expert is employed by or member of an entity on the disclosure list
    198provided by the disclosing party, then participation will be requested from
    199the relevant entity.
    200
    201If not, then the disclosing party will be informed about the experts
    202participation. The experts are covered by the Memorandum of Understanding
    203and the disclosing party is requested to acknowledge the participation. In
    204case that the disclosing party has a compelling reason to object, then this
    205objection has to be raised within five work days and resolved with the
    206incident team immediately. If the disclosing party does not react within
    207five work days this is taken as silent acknowledgement.
    208
    209After acknowledgement or resolution of an objection the expert is disclosed
    210by the incident team and brought into the development process.
    211
    212
    213Coordinated release
    214"""""""""""""""""""
    215
    216The involved parties will negotiate the date and time where the embargo
    217ends. At that point the prepared mitigations are integrated into the
    218relevant kernel trees and published.
    219
    220While we understand that hardware security issues need coordinated embargo
    221time, the embargo time should be constrained to the minimum time which is
    222required for all involved parties to develop, test and prepare the
    223mitigations. Extending embargo time artificially to meet conference talk
    224dates or other non-technical reasons is creating more work and burden for
    225the involved developers and response teams as the patches need to be kept
    226up to date in order to follow the ongoing upstream kernel development,
    227which might create conflicting changes.
    228
    229CVE assignment
    230""""""""""""""
    231
    232Neither the hardware security team nor the initial response team assign
    233CVEs, nor are CVEs required for the development process. If CVEs are
    234provided by the disclosing party they can be used for documentation
    235purposes.
    236
    237Process ambassadors
    238-------------------
    239
    240For assistance with this process we have established ambassadors in various
    241organizations, who can answer questions about or provide guidance on the
    242reporting process and further handling. Ambassadors are not involved in the
    243disclosure of a particular issue, unless requested by a response team or by
    244an involved disclosed party. The current ambassadors list:
    245
    246  ============= ========================================================
    247  AMD		Tom Lendacky <tom.lendacky@amd.com>
    248  Ampere	Darren Hart <darren@os.amperecomputing.com>
    249  ARM		Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>
    250  IBM Power	Anton Blanchard <anton@linux.ibm.com>
    251  IBM Z		Christian Borntraeger <borntraeger@de.ibm.com>
    252  Intel		Tony Luck <tony.luck@intel.com>
    253  Qualcomm	Trilok Soni <tsoni@codeaurora.org>
    254
    255  Microsoft	James Morris <jamorris@linux.microsoft.com>
    256  VMware
    257  Xen		Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper3@citrix.com>
    258
    259  Canonical	John Johansen <john.johansen@canonical.com>
    260  Debian	Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk>
    261  Oracle	Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@oracle.com>
    262  Red Hat	Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com>
    263  SUSE		Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>
    264
    265  Amazon
    266  Google	Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
    267  ============= ========================================================
    268
    269If you want your organization to be added to the ambassadors list, please
    270contact the hardware security team. The nominated ambassador has to
    271understand and support our process fully and is ideally well connected in
    272the Linux kernel community.
    273
    274Encrypted mailing-lists
    275-----------------------
    276
    277We use encrypted mailing-lists for communication. The operating principle
    278of these lists is that email sent to the list is encrypted either with the
    279list's PGP key or with the list's S/MIME certificate. The mailing-list
    280software decrypts the email and re-encrypts it individually for each
    281subscriber with the subscriber's PGP key or S/MIME certificate. Details
    282about the mailing-list software and the setup which is used to ensure the
    283security of the lists and protection of the data can be found here:
    284https://korg.wiki.kernel.org/userdoc/remail.
    285
    286List keys
    287^^^^^^^^^
    288
    289For initial contact see :ref:`Contact`. For incident specific mailing-lists
    290the key and S/MIME certificate are conveyed to the subscribers by email
    291sent from the specific list.
    292
    293Subscription to incident specific lists
    294^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    295
    296Subscription is handled by the response teams. Disclosed parties who want
    297to participate in the communication send a list of potential subscribers to
    298the response team so the response team can validate subscription requests.
    299
    300Each subscriber needs to send a subscription request to the response team
    301by email. The email must be signed with the subscriber's PGP key or S/MIME
    302certificate. If a PGP key is used, it must be available from a public key
    303server and is ideally connected to the Linux kernel's PGP web of trust. See
    304also: https://www.kernel.org/signature.html.
    305
    306The response team verifies that the subscriber request is valid and adds
    307the subscriber to the list. After subscription the subscriber will receive
    308email from the mailing-list which is signed either with the list's PGP key
    309or the list's S/MIME certificate. The subscriber's email client can extract
    310the PGP key or the S/MIME certificate from the signature so the subscriber
    311can send encrypted email to the list.
    312