On Fri, Feb 16, 2018 at 11:18:12AM +0000, Ard Biesheuvel wrote: > On 16 February 2018 at 11:08, Borislav Petkov <bp@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Fri, Feb 16, 2018 at 10:58:47AM +0000, Ard Biesheuvel wrote: > >> By your own reasoning above, that's a no-no as well. > > > > I'm sure we can come up with some emulation - the same way we did the > > BIOS emulation. > > > >> But thanks for your input. Anyone else got something constructive to contribute? > > > > The not-breaking userspace is constructive contribution. The last > > paragraph is my usual rant. > > > > Fair enough. And I am not disagreeing with you either. > > So question to Joe: is it well defined which variables may exhibit > this behavior? For brevity's sake, "not yet." Folks-- e.g. firmware writers and equipment makers-- may use SMIs more (or less) than others. So, how many SMIs generated by the reference shell script can, and will, vary platform to platform. I and my colleagues are digging into this. > Given that UEFI variables are GUID scoped, would whitelisting certain > GUIDs (the ones userland currently relies on to be readable my > non-privileged users) and making everything else user-only solve this > problem as well? Perhaps. I don't want us chasing white rabbits just yet, but the whitelist is but one approach under consideration. We may see some other patches or RFCs about caching and/or shadowing variable values in efivarfs to reduce the number of direct EFI reads, with the goal of reducing how many SMIs are generated. Any obvious EFI variables that userspace tools have come to depend on-- those which normal, unprivileged users need to read-- are helpful inputs to this discussion. The discussion is double-ended: asking the "which variables almost always cause SMIs?" at the front and "which variables do normal, unprivileged tools need for standard operation?" at the back. Cheers, thanks for the feedback and consideration
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