[virtio-dev] Using packed virtqueues in Confidential VMs

Hi Elena,
You raised concerns about using packed virtqueues with untrusted devices at
Linux Plumbers Conference. I reviewed the specification and did not find
fundamental issues that would preclude the use of packed virtqueues in
untrusted devices. Do you have more information about issues with packed
virtqueues?

I also reviewed Linux's virtio_ring.c to look for implementation issues. One
thing I noticed was that detach_buf_packed -> vring_unmap_desc_packed trusts
the fields of indirect descriptors that have been mapped to the device:

  flags = le16_to_cpu(desc->flags);

  dma_unmap_page(vring_dma_dev(vq),
                 le64_to_cpu(desc->addr),
                 le32_to_cpu(desc->len),
                 (flags & VRING_DESC_F_WRITE) ?
                 DMA_FROM_DEVICE : DMA_TO_DEVICE);

This could be problematic if the device is able to modify indirect descriptors.
However, the indirect descriptor table is mapped with DMA_TO_DEVICE:

  addr = vring_map_single(vq, desc,
                          total_sg * sizeof(struct vring_packed_desc),
                          DMA_TO_DEVICE);

There is no problem when there is an enforcing IOMMU that maps the page with
read-only permissions but that's not always the case. Software devices (QEMU,
vhost kernel, or vhost-user) usually have full access to guest RAM. They can
cause dma_unmap_page() to be invoked with arguments of their choice (except for
the first argument) by modifying indirect descriptors.

I am not sure if this poses a danger since software devices already have access
to guest RAM, but I think this code is risky. It would be safer for the driver
to stash away the arguments needed for dma_unmap_page() in memory that is not
mapped to the device.

Other than that, I didn't find any issues with the packed virtqueue
implementation.

Stefan

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