Hi Indan,

thanks for the explanation. Anyway, still not clear to me 🙏.

Let me clarify my risk model.

1) I don't care abour user space (Linux/web server) crashes
2) Suppose I have a webserver example with a "vulnerable" seL4 kernel
version

I'm a bit concerned about "But those operations, if done in good faith".

So to be even more precise:

In a "webserver example" of year... 2022? (which will be running an old
seL4 version), as is, with no modifications from what was published at that
time:

Can or can not the kernel be crashed in a exploitable way? An seL4 system
halt is not a problem to me. An execution manipulation at kernel level it
would be. A halt is a halt. No problem. But seL4 is formally verified, so,
my concern is if an attacker can do more than halting the seL4.

This kind of questions are not just for fun guys, this is what customers
will ask you every single time a non verified code bug arises. And the
infosec community needs that kind of analysis to increase trust.

Thank you in advance 🙏




On Tuesday, November 5, 2024, Indan Zupancic <in...@nul.nu> wrote:
> Hello Hugo,
>
> The bugs you listed are only a problem for untrusted code. That is, it
gives
> threads with vcpu control or vspace caps the ability to cause a system
halt,
> effectively giving them more rights than they should have, hence it being
a
> vulnerability. But those operations, if done in good faith, would be user
> space bugs.
>
> In the case of the webserver example, if you can trigger either of the
two bugs
> in any way, with a current kernel it will avoid the kernel crashing, but
it will
> still mean your user space will most likely be broken, resulting in the
same end
> user experience of a non-working system. Because as far as I know, the
webserver
> example has no fault detection, recovery or restart mechanism implemented.
>
> Greetings,
>
> Indan
>
> On 2024-11-05 10:34, Hugo V.C. wrote:
>>
>> Hi Gerwin,
>>
>> thanks for the fast response! Yes, this.I already know. But I'm
interested
>> in this specific case:
>>
>> https://docs.sel4.systems/projects/sel4webserver/
>>
>> as I guess it may not vulnerable as this example (by default) does not
run
>> SMP seL4. For "for cache maintenance ops" I'm not sure as this qemu
>> environment. Any hints?
>>
>> On Tuesday, November 5, 2024, Gerwin Klein <kle...@unsw.edu.au> wrote:
>>>
>>> HI Hugo,
>>> The CHANGES.md file lists the vulnerable versions of seL4 for each of
>>
>> these (https://github.com/seL4/seL4/blob/master/CHANGES.md)
>>>
>>> - for VCPU/SMP: seL4 versions 12.0.0 and 12.1.0.
>>> - for cache maintenance ops on AArch64: all versions before 13.0.0 from
>>
>> 5.0.0
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Gerwin
>>>
>>> On 5 Nov 2024, at 10:02, Hugo V.C. <skydive...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I'm forwarding this question here (tried on Mattermost Trustworthy
Systems
>>> group first) hoping someone can put some light on this?
>>>
>>> ---
>>>
>>> Hi, I'm having a look to the vulns (in areas of the kernel that have not
>>> been formally verified) patched in seL4 13.0.0.
>>>
>>> We have:
>>>
>>> 1) "NULL pointer dereference when injecting an IRQ for a non-associated
>>> VCPU on SMP configurations." 2) "On AArch64, when seL4 runs in EL1 the
>>> kernel would fault with a data abort in seL4_ARM_Page_Invalidate_Data
and
>>> seL4_ARM_VSpace_Invalidate_Data when the user requested a dc ivac cache
>>> maintenance operation on a page that is not mapped writeable."
>>>
>>> Extremely simple question: running version < 13.0.0 on top of Qemu (in
>>> example like https://docs.sel4.systems/projects/sel4webserver/) would it
>>
>> be
>>>
>>> vulnerable to any of those?
>>>
>>> ---
>>>
>>> Best,
>
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