Document and categorize system and performance data into groups that can be captured by perf_events/Perf and explicitly indicate the group that can contain process sensitive data. Signed-off-by: Alexey Budankov <alexey.budankov@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- Documentation/admin-guide/perf-security.rst | 32 +++++++++++++++++++-- 1 file changed, 30 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/perf-security.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/perf-security.rst index bac599e3c55f..8772d44a5912 100644 --- a/Documentation/admin-guide/perf-security.rst +++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/perf-security.rst @@ -11,8 +11,34 @@ impose a considerable risk of leaking sensitive data accessed by monitored processes. The data leakage is possible both in scenarios of direct usage of perf_events system call API [2]_ and over data files generated by Perf tool user mode utility (Perf) [3]_ , [4]_ . The risk depends on the nature of data that -perf_events performance monitoring units (PMU) [2]_ collect and expose for -performance analysis. Having that said perf_events/Perf performance monitoring +perf_events performance monitoring units (PMU) [2]_ and Perf collect and expose +for performance analysis. Collected system and performance data may be split into +several categories: + +1. System hardware and software configuration data, for example: a CPU model and + its cache configuration, an amount of available memory and its topology, used + kernel and Perf versions, performance monitoring setup including experiment + time, events configuration, Perf command line parameters, etc. + +2. User and kernel module paths and their load addresses with sizes, process and + thread names with their PIDs and TIDs, timestamps for captured hardware and + software events. + +3. Content of kernel software counters (e.g., for context switches, page faults, + CPU migrations), architectural hardware performance counters (PMC) [8]_ and + machine specific registers (MSR) [9]_ that provide execution metrics for + various monitored parts of the system (e.g., memory controller (IMC), interconnect + (QPI/UPI) or peripheral (PCIe) uncore counters) without direct attribution to any + execution context state. + +4. Content of architectural execution context registers (e.g., RIP, RSP, RBP on + x86_64), process user and kernel space memory addresses and data, content of + various architectural MSRs that capture data from this category. + +Data that belong to the fourth category can potentially contain sensitive process +data. If PMUs in some monitoring modes capture values of execution context registers +or data from process memory then access to such monitoring capabilities requires +to be ordered and secured properly. So, perf_events/Perf performance monitoring is the subject for security access control management [5]_ . perf_events/Perf access control @@ -134,6 +160,8 @@ Bibliography .. [5] `<https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/security/credentials.html>`_ .. [6] `<http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/capabilities.7.html>`_ .. [7] `<http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/ptrace.2.html>`_ +.. [8] `<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_performance_counter>`_ +.. [9] `<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-specific_register>`_ .. [11] `<http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/getrlimit.2.html>`_ .. [12] `<http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man5/limits.conf.5.html>`_
