New Spectre-v2 BTR Attack Leaks Linux Memory Despite Existing Defenses
BTR, a new Spectre-v2 variant from VUSec researchers, hijacks stale JIT branch predictions to leak kernel secrets from fully patched systems.
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: bpf: Support for hardening against JIT spraying The BPF JIT allocator packs many small programs into larger executable allocations and reuses space within those allocations as programs are loaded and freed. When fresh code is written into space that a previous program occupied, an indirect jump into the new program can reuse a branch prediction left behind by the old one. Flush the indirect branch predictors before reusing JIT memory so that indirect jumps into a newly written program don't reuse predictions from an old program that occupied the same space. Introduce bpf_arch_pred_flush_enabled static key and bpf_arch_pred_flush static call for flushing the branch predictors on JIT memory reuse. Architectures that need a flush, can update it to a predictor flush function. By default, its a NOP and does not emit any CALL. Allocations larger than a pack are not covered by this flush. That is safe because cBPF programs (the unprivileged attack surface) are bounded well below a pack size. Issue a warning if this assumption is ever violated while the flush is active.
BTR, a new Spectre-v2 variant from VUSec researchers, hijacks stale JIT branch predictions to leak kernel secrets from fully patched systems.
Researchers' Branch Target Reuse attack leaks Linux root password hashes via stale CPU predictions.
Researchers disclose Branch Target Reuse, a Spectre v2 JIT attack that can leak Linux root password hashes.
VUsec's Branch Target Reuse Spectre v2 variant leaks Linux root password hashes in minutes by abusing stale branch predictor entries after JIT code reuse.
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