Yet another entry in the “why we can’t have nice things” category, Retbleed was announced this week, as yet another speculative execution vulnerability. This one is mitigated in hardware for AMD’s Zen 3 and Intel Generation 9 and later. For earlier devices the performance hit in mitigation is quite painful. What exactly makes this different from previous weaknesses, and why didn’t the previous mitigations cover this problem?
Spectre V2 abuses a CPU’s indirect branch prediction, to trigger speculative execution of code that shouldn’t be executed in a given context. Even though the CPU eventually catches up and rolls back the bogus execution, there are still fingerprints left behind in the cache contents. The idea is that reading those fingerprints leaks actual data that the attacker process shouldn’t have access to at all. The solution in the Linux kernel is the “retpoline“, a portmanteau of “return” and “trampoline”. This gadget replaces a jmp instruction with some setup, and finally a ret call instead. This looked to be an inexpensive solution to the problem.
What Retbleed brings to the table is a method to poison the speculative execution of these return instructions as well. Their full paper (PDF) describes the technique, which boils down to manipulating a processor to use the vulnerable Branch Target Buffer (BTB) instead of the safer Return Stack Buffer (RSB). On vulnerable Intel systems, this means filling the RSB with enough data to pop the actual target return out of the buffer. When the series of jumps and returns unwind, the final return actually uses the BTB as the RSB has emptied, or underrun. Vulnerable AMD systems seem to simply always use a BTB to predict returns, making the exploitation much easier there.
Windows machines use a more aggressive mitigation policy, Indirect Branch Restricted Speculation (IBRS), which does seem to fully mitigate this particular issue, though there may be more coming in the next few weeks. On Linux, the retpoline mitigation is finally being replaced by IBRS by default, leading to the performance hit discussed above.
If you’re on one of the affected CPUs, there are some kernel parameters you can use to control what mitigations are put in place. retbleed=off uses the existing retpoline mitigation if appropriate, but doesn’t further degrade performance, at the expense of vulnerability to this attack. The default, retbleed=auto will use the full mitigations to make the machine as safe as practical without disabling Simultaneous MultiThreading (SMT). And finally retbleed=auto,nosmt will actually disable SMT on the few models that technically require it for full mitigations. This isn’t set by default, as it is even more crippling to the machine’s performance.
NIST Goes Post-Quantum
While the quantum crypto-Apocalypse has yet to be realized, the various agencies responsible for standards are working to stay ahead of the curve by sponsoring research and then selecting cryptography schemes to be used as next-gen standards. In that vein, NIST has released an update to their Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization Process. The big news here is that a few algorithms have been selected. Falcon, SPHINCS, CRYSTALS-Kyber, and CRYSTALS-Dilithium. There definitely seems to be some sci-fi geeks among the entrants, based on the names.
CRYSTALS-Kyber is a Key Encapsulation Mechanism (KEM), a method to share a private key using only publicly sent messages, a la Diffie-Hellman. CRYSTALS-Dilithium and the others are signature schemes, useful for verifying data. We look forward to these standards rolling out through the different projects and applications we use daily.
PyPI, 2FA, and a Grumpy Dev
In an effort to avoid security problems, the PyPI repository has rolled out a security policy that requires maintainers of critical projects to use Two-Factor Authentication for their accounts, and are even sending out free hardware keys. The criteria for inclusion is to be in the top 1% of downloads for six months. There’s a relevant question in the FAQ on the page: “Can a project opt-out or become non-critical in any way?” The official answer states, “No, once the project has been designated as critical it retains that designation indefinitely.” At least one developer discovered a workaround, with interesting results.
nice, I just deleted the atomicwrites package, then uploaded a new version. now it's no longer a critical project
— Markus Unterwaditzer (@untitaker) July 8, 2022
Read that again. One of the most popular packages on PyPI was deleted and a new version uploaded. Every project and every dependency that pointed to a pinned version of atomicwrites got their installation process broken. Sure, it’s no longer marked as a critical package, and the author doesn’t have to use 2FA, but until the PyPI admins stepped in and rectified the problem, a bunch of developers around the world were in quite the pickle. The primary dev, [unitaker] has since decided to leave the package alone, but deprecate it.
Let us know what you think, is PyPI in the wrong, requiring volunteer devs to use 2FA, or is the supply chain issue important enough to make it worth the hassle?
Cuteboi
And if you want to know why PyPi is worried about security — there’s been some odd activity spotted on NPM, to the tune of over a thousand malicious packages mass-uploaded to the service. It’s all under randomly named users, and seems to be a variation of eazyminer, which is a simple coin mining package for Node.js. The name comes from the configuration of that miner, which sends to a pool named “cute”.
This seems to have been a test of an automated tool to create users and upload packages, maybe gearing up for a more malicious run. Or it could be a fellow researcher, who plans to publish a report about how to automate user creation. Either way, there’s even a site available to track the bot’s activity, appropriately named cuteboi.info. (I know, that looks like a terrifying URL. I promise, it’s safe for work.)
Bits and Bytes
We’ve been following the OpenSSL AVX512 memory corruption story for sever weeks now. There’s finally a pin in this issue, as OpenSSL 3.0.5 has been released, containing the fix. As far as we know, a full RCE exploit does not exist for this bug. So while it could be a very serious problem when viewed in isolation, this one will almost certainly a real-world impact that rounds to zero.
QNAP has published an advisory about a new ransomware attack against their NAS devices, and the recommended action boils down to, “Do not expose SMB to the internet.” The attack seems to be a dictionary attack against exposed services. An update is available to harden the service, and QNAP recommends using a VPN instead of exposing services to the net.
Microsoft is finally trying to leave the past behind, and block macros by default in office documents. Office has a logic flow to determine whether to run macros, starting with whether the document is explicitly trusted, whether the macros are signed by a trusted publisher, etc. What’s new is the default behavior when the flow falls off the end of the chart. In the past, it would fail open, running the macros by default. The new behavior fails safe, refusing to run. The craziest thing about this is that they’ve received enough pushback that this change has been rolled back for now, so you can still push macro viruses through. Party like it’s 1999, Melissa!
And if that isn’t enough security craziness, check out the story of Aerojet Recketdyne which hired [Brian Markus] as “senior director of cybersecurity, compliance, and controls.” Rocketdyne was falsifying reports, like reporting that they did have a certain piece of security equipment, when it was still in the box. All of this in pursuit of government contracts. [Markus] refused to sign off on a document stating the company had complied with the appropriate rules. He refused to sign, and was fired as a result. After multiple year of legal wrangling, the parties have settled, with [Markus] receiving over $2.6 million from the company, and the US gov’t receiving twice that much. Some times, apparently, it pays to do the right thing. (Via Heise.de).
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