Hi Alex, Regarding the security model, I still think the need for admin privileges is enough, But Since you disagree, we can go with one of the following solutions: 1. Go back to the model where the VFs are assigned to the same IOMMU group as the PF. 2. Add an owner_pid to struct vfio_group and make sure in vfio_group_get_device_fd that the PFs vfio_group is owned by the same process as the one that is trying to get a fd for a VF. Will you accept either of this solutions? Regarding the cleanup, I can fix it with a small bug fix + a call to pci_disable_sriov inside vfio_pci_disable. Thanks, Ilya > -----Original Message----- > From: Alex Williamson [mailto:alex.williamson@xxxxxxxxxx] > Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:46 PM > To: Ilya Lesokhin <ilyal@xxxxxxxxxxxx> > Cc: kvm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; linux-pci@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; bhelgaas@xxxxxxxxxx; > Noa Osherovich <noaos@xxxxxxxxxxxx>; Haggai Eran > <haggaie@xxxxxxxxxxxx>; Or Gerlitz <ogerlitz@xxxxxxxxxxxx>; Liran Liss > <liranl@xxxxxxxxxxxx> > Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 0/2] VFIO SRIOV support > > On Tue, 21 Jun 2016 07:19:14 +0000 > Ilya Lesokhin <ilyal@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > Why is the need for admin privileges not enough to make it safe? > > Seems like an opportunity for a phishing attempt, an exploited VM generates > VFs and hopes that they get assigned to other VMs or put to other uses. It > simply allows one VM to create resources that are really not tied to that VM > and can easily be mis-used in other ways, potentially even with the > assumption that it's secure. > > > What's the difference between the following? > > 1. A PF is assigned to one user and the admin assigns one of it VFs to > a different user. > > 2. The admin assign the main network interface of the machine to a > VM and bring down all the connectivity of the host. > > In case 1. does the admin realize what they've done? How? Maybe they just > start filing bugs when they shutdown the PF assigned VM or even just reboot > it and the VF assigned VM no longer has connectivity. A typical user might > just think "hey cool, now I can assign PFs and VFs" > w/o considering the implications of that. There are aspects of the host that > we need to trust, allowing another VM to hold some of that trust is not such > an obvious thing. Clearly in case 2. the admin is going to pretty quickly figure > out that they've done something terribly wrong. > > > Indeed we don't address clean up, but we didn't see any adverse effect > from the VFs remaining probed by the VFIO driver after the VM is shutdown. > > Yet that's clearly not the state the PF was in when assigned and those VFs > have no cleanup mechanism. This is a big problem. > > > Would you be willing to accept this feature under some kconfig option or if > it was allowed only for Privileged processes? > > I would hate to throw this feature away just because we can't address > every corner case. > > I'm not willing to accept half baked features and letting them bitrot under a > config option that doesn't get regular use doesn't help. If this is really that > useful to you then make it safe and predictable. I don't have answers to all > the issues this generates, it might require extensions to driver APIs or new > mechanisms for vfio to associate device ownership. There might be valid use > cases for a user owned PF sourcing VFs owned by other users, but obviously > to me it sounds like a rats nest of security issues and "because we can" and > "useful development tool" are not resounding motives for me to sign up > trying to support it. Thanks, > > Alex -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-pci" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
