Re: [PATCH] xen/arm: optee: Allocate anonymous domheap pages

[Volodymyr Babchuk <Volodymyr_Babchuk@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi Stefano,

Stefano Stabellini <sstabellini@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> On Mon, 6 Sep 2021, Oleksandr Tyshchenko wrote:
>> From: Oleksandr Tyshchenko <oleksandr_tyshchenko@xxxxxxxx>
>> 
>> Allocate anonymous domheap pages as there is no strict need to
>> account them to a particular domain.
>> 
>> Since XSA-383 "xen/arm: Restrict the amount of memory that dom0less
>> domU and dom0 can allocate" the dom0 cannot allocate memory outside
>> of the pre-allocated region. This means if we try to allocate
>> non-anonymous page to be accounted to dom0 we will get an
>> over-allocation issue when assigning that page to the domain.
>> The anonymous page, in turn, is not assigned to any domain.
>> 
>> CC: Julien Grall <jgrall@xxxxxxxxxx>
>> Signed-off-by: Oleksandr Tyshchenko <oleksandr_tyshchenko@xxxxxxxx>
>> Acked-by: Volodymyr Babchuk <volodymyr_babchuk@xxxxxxxx>
>
> Only one question, which is more architectural: given that these pages
> are "unlimited", could the guest exploit the interface somehow to force
> Xen to allocate an very high number of anonymous pages?
>
> E.g. could a domain call OPTEE_SMC_RPC_FUNC_ALLOC in a loop to force Xen
> to exaust all memory pages?

Generally, OP-TEE mediator tracks all resources allocated and imposes
limits on them.

OPTEE_SMC_RPC_FUNC_ALLOC case is a bit different, because it is issued
not by domain, but by OP-TEE itself. As OP-TEE is more trusted piece of
system we allow it to request as many buffers as it wants. Also, we know
that OP-TEE asks only for one such buffer per every standard call. And
number of simultaneous calls is limited by number of OP-TEE threads,
which is quite low: typically only two.

-- 
Volodymyr Babchuk at EPAM