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authorPeter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org>2019-05-10 14:49:36 +0100
committerPeter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org>2019-05-10 14:49:36 +0100
commitefb4f3b62c69383a7308d7b739a3193e7c0ccae8 (patch)
treed39006b859bec039e9c08f44c9191cab4f053fa5 /docs
parent5f022626c8807e5848af223908d533973a4b2922 (diff)
parente84125761f78919fe63616d9888ea45e72dc956f (diff)
downloadfocaccia-qemu-efb4f3b62c69383a7308d7b739a3193e7c0ccae8.tar.gz
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Merge remote-tracking branch 'remotes/stefanha/tags/block-pull-request' into staging
Pull request

# gpg: Signature made Fri 10 May 2019 14:02:22 BST
# gpg:                using RSA key 8695A8BFD3F97CDAAC35775A9CA4ABB381AB73C8
# gpg: Good signature from "Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@redhat.com>" [full]
# gpg:                 aka "Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@gmail.com>" [full]
# Primary key fingerprint: 8695 A8BF D3F9 7CDA AC35  775A 9CA4 ABB3 81AB 73C8

* remotes/stefanha/tags/block-pull-request:
  docs: add Security chapter to the documentation
  docs: add Secure Coding Practices to developer docs
  aio-posix: ensure poll mode is left when aio_notify is called
  block/io.c: fix for the allocation failure
  block: Add coroutine_fn to bdrv_check_co_entry
  util/readline: Add braces to fix checkpatch errors
  util: readline: replace tab indent by four spaces to fix checkpatch errors
  util/readline: add a space to fix errors by checkpatch tool

Signed-off-by: Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'docs')
-rw-r--r--docs/devel/index.rst1
-rw-r--r--docs/devel/secure-coding-practices.rst106
-rw-r--r--docs/security.texi131
3 files changed, 238 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/docs/devel/index.rst b/docs/devel/index.rst
index ebbab636ce..2a4ddf40ad 100644
--- a/docs/devel/index.rst
+++ b/docs/devel/index.rst
@@ -20,3 +20,4 @@ Contents:
    stable-process
    testing
    decodetree
+   secure-coding-practices
diff --git a/docs/devel/secure-coding-practices.rst b/docs/devel/secure-coding-practices.rst
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..cbfc8af67e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/devel/secure-coding-practices.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,106 @@
+=======================
+Secure Coding Practices
+=======================
+This document covers topics that both developers and security researchers must
+be aware of so that they can develop safe code and audit existing code
+properly.
+
+Reporting Security Bugs
+-----------------------
+For details on how to report security bugs or ask questions about potential
+security bugs, see the `Security Process wiki page
+<https://wiki.qemu.org/SecurityProcess>`_.
+
+General Secure C Coding Practices
+---------------------------------
+Most CVEs (security bugs) reported against QEMU are not specific to
+virtualization or emulation.  They are simply C programming bugs.  Therefore
+it's critical to be aware of common classes of security bugs.
+
+There is a wide selection of resources available covering secure C coding.  For
+example, the `CERT C Coding Standard
+<https://wiki.sei.cmu.edu/confluence/display/c/SEI+CERT+C+Coding+Standard>`_
+covers the most important classes of security bugs.
+
+Instead of describing them in detail here, only the names of the most important
+classes of security bugs are mentioned:
+
+* Buffer overflows
+* Use-after-free and double-free
+* Integer overflows
+* Format string vulnerabilities
+
+Some of these classes of bugs can be detected by analyzers.  Static analysis is
+performed regularly by Coverity and the most obvious of these bugs are even
+reported by compilers.  Dynamic analysis is possible with valgrind, tsan, and
+asan.
+
+Input Validation
+----------------
+Inputs from the guest or external sources (e.g. network, files) cannot be
+trusted and may be invalid.  Inputs must be checked before using them in a way
+that could crash the program, expose host memory to the guest, or otherwise be
+exploitable by an attacker.
+
+The most sensitive attack surface is device emulation.  All hardware register
+accesses and data read from guest memory must be validated.  A typical example
+is a device that contains multiple units that are selectable by the guest via
+an index register::
+
+  typedef struct {
+      ProcessingUnit unit[2];
+      ...
+  } MyDeviceState;
+
+  static void mydev_writel(void *opaque, uint32_t addr, uint32_t val)
+  {
+      MyDeviceState *mydev = opaque;
+      ProcessingUnit *unit;
+
+      switch (addr) {
+      case MYDEV_SELECT_UNIT:
+          unit = &mydev->unit[val];   <-- this input wasn't validated!
+          ...
+      }
+  }
+
+If ``val`` is not in range [0, 1] then an out-of-bounds memory access will take
+place when ``unit`` is dereferenced.  The code must check that ``val`` is 0 or
+1 and handle the case where it is invalid.
+
+Unexpected Device Accesses
+--------------------------
+The guest may access device registers in unusual orders or at unexpected
+moments.  Device emulation code must not assume that the guest follows the
+typical "theory of operation" presented in driver writer manuals.  The guest
+may make nonsense accesses to device registers such as starting operations
+before the device has been fully initialized.
+
+A related issue is that device emulation code must be prepared for unexpected
+device register accesses while asynchronous operations are in progress.  A
+well-behaved guest might wait for a completion interrupt before accessing
+certain device registers.  Device emulation code must handle the case where the
+guest overwrites registers or submits further requests before an ongoing
+request completes.  Unexpected accesses must not cause memory corruption or
+leaks in QEMU.
+
+Invalid device register accesses can be reported with
+``qemu_log_mask(LOG_GUEST_ERROR, ...)``.  The ``-d guest_errors`` command-line
+option enables these log messages.
+
+Live Migration
+--------------
+Device state can be saved to disk image files and shared with other users.
+Live migration code must validate inputs when loading device state so an
+attacker cannot gain control by crafting invalid device states.  Device state
+is therefore considered untrusted even though it is typically generated by QEMU
+itself.
+
+Guest Memory Access Races
+-------------------------
+Guests with multiple vCPUs may modify guest RAM while device emulation code is
+running.  Device emulation code must copy in descriptors and other guest RAM
+structures and only process the local copy.  This prevents
+time-of-check-to-time-of-use (TOCTOU) race conditions that could cause QEMU to
+crash when a vCPU thread modifies guest RAM while device emulation is
+processing it.
diff --git a/docs/security.texi b/docs/security.texi
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..927764f1e6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/security.texi
@@ -0,0 +1,131 @@
+@node Security
+@chapter Security
+
+@section Overview
+
+This chapter explains the security requirements that QEMU is designed to meet
+and principles for securely deploying QEMU.
+
+@section Security Requirements
+
+QEMU supports many different use cases, some of which have stricter security
+requirements than others.  The community has agreed on the overall security
+requirements that users may depend on.  These requirements define what is
+considered supported from a security perspective.
+
+@subsection Virtualization Use Case
+
+The virtualization use case covers cloud and virtual private server (VPS)
+hosting, as well as traditional data center and desktop virtualization.  These
+use cases rely on hardware virtualization extensions to execute guest code
+safely on the physical CPU at close-to-native speed.
+
+The following entities are untrusted, meaning that they may be buggy or
+malicious:
+
+@itemize
+@item Guest
+@item User-facing interfaces (e.g. VNC, SPICE, WebSocket)
+@item Network protocols (e.g. NBD, live migration)
+@item User-supplied files (e.g. disk images, kernels, device trees)
+@item Passthrough devices (e.g. PCI, USB)
+@end itemize
+
+Bugs affecting these entities are evaluated on whether they can cause damage in
+real-world use cases and treated as security bugs if this is the case.
+
+@subsection Non-virtualization Use Case
+
+The non-virtualization use case covers emulation using the Tiny Code Generator
+(TCG).  In principle the TCG and device emulation code used in conjunction with
+the non-virtualization use case should meet the same security requirements as
+the virtualization use case.  However, for historical reasons much of the
+non-virtualization use case code was not written with these security
+requirements in mind.
+
+Bugs affecting the non-virtualization use case are not considered security
+bugs at this time.  Users with non-virtualization use cases must not rely on
+QEMU to provide guest isolation or any security guarantees.
+
+@section Architecture
+
+This section describes the design principles that ensure the security
+requirements are met.
+
+@subsection Guest Isolation
+
+Guest isolation is the confinement of guest code to the virtual machine.  When
+guest code gains control of execution on the host this is called escaping the
+virtual machine.  Isolation also includes resource limits such as throttling of
+CPU, memory, disk, or network.  Guests must be unable to exceed their resource
+limits.
+
+QEMU presents an attack surface to the guest in the form of emulated devices.
+The guest must not be able to gain control of QEMU.  Bugs in emulated devices
+could allow malicious guests to gain code execution in QEMU.  At this point the
+guest has escaped the virtual machine and is able to act in the context of the
+QEMU process on the host.
+
+Guests often interact with other guests and share resources with them.  A
+malicious guest must not gain control of other guests or access their data.
+Disk image files and network traffic must be protected from other guests unless
+explicitly shared between them by the user.
+
+@subsection Principle of Least Privilege
+
+The principle of least privilege states that each component only has access to
+the privileges necessary for its function.  In the case of QEMU this means that
+each process only has access to resources belonging to the guest.
+
+The QEMU process should not have access to any resources that are inaccessible
+to the guest.  This way the guest does not gain anything by escaping into the
+QEMU process since it already has access to those same resources from within
+the guest.
+
+Following the principle of least privilege immediately fulfills guest isolation
+requirements.  For example, guest A only has access to its own disk image file
+@code{a.img} and not guest B's disk image file @code{b.img}.
+
+In reality certain resources are inaccessible to the guest but must be
+available to QEMU to perform its function.  For example, host system calls are
+necessary for QEMU but are not exposed to guests.  A guest that escapes into
+the QEMU process can then begin invoking host system calls.
+
+New features must be designed to follow the principle of least privilege.
+Should this not be possible for technical reasons, the security risk must be
+clearly documented so users are aware of the trade-off of enabling the feature.
+
+@subsection Isolation mechanisms
+
+Several isolation mechanisms are available to realize this architecture of
+guest isolation and the principle of least privilege.  With the exception of
+Linux seccomp, these mechanisms are all deployed by management tools that
+launch QEMU, such as libvirt.  They are also platform-specific so they are only
+described briefly for Linux here.
+
+The fundamental isolation mechanism is that QEMU processes must run as
+unprivileged users.  Sometimes it seems more convenient to launch QEMU as
+root to give it access to host devices (e.g. @code{/dev/net/tun}) but this poses a
+huge security risk.  File descriptor passing can be used to give an otherwise
+unprivileged QEMU process access to host devices without running QEMU as root.
+It is also possible to launch QEMU as a non-root user and configure UNIX groups
+for access to @code{/dev/kvm}, @code{/dev/net/tun}, and other device nodes.
+Some Linux distros already ship with UNIX groups for these devices by default.
+
+@itemize
+@item SELinux and AppArmor make it possible to confine processes beyond the
+traditional UNIX process and file permissions model.  They restrict the QEMU
+process from accessing processes and files on the host system that are not
+needed by QEMU.
+
+@item Resource limits and cgroup controllers provide throughput and utilization
+limits on key resources such as CPU time, memory, and I/O bandwidth.
+
+@item Linux namespaces can be used to make process, file system, and other system
+resources unavailable to QEMU.  A namespaced QEMU process is restricted to only
+those resources that were granted to it.
+
+@item Linux seccomp is available via the QEMU @option{--sandbox} option.  It disables
+system calls that are not needed by QEMU, thereby reducing the host kernel
+attack surface.
+@end itemize