cs24-20fa Project 05: meltdown

Introduction to Computing Systems (Fall 2020)

Introduction

Over the past few weeks, we have discussed processes, what a kernel is, caches, and virtual memory. In this project, you will put all of these ideas together into an exploit that effects most processors designed between 1995 and 2018.

Setup

Like usual, you should register for the assignment by going to https://grinch.caltech.edu/register which will create you a repository on gitlab with the starter code.

The Scenario

In Adam’s office, there are two machines named meltdown1 and meltdown2. The kernel on these machines has been customized slightly in the following ways:

Normally, when you push to GitLab, a server called oobleck runs your code in a sandbox. Your repository for this project has been set up so that, when you push to gitlab, the machine that runs your code will be either meltdown1 or meltdown2 (these two machines should be considered interchangable). Specifically, when you push, we call make and then run ./bin/exploit directly on the meltdown machine. After your code runs, the machine verifies that you printed out the correct password and terminates with success or failure as a result. That is, the gitlab tests will pass if and only if your code outputs exactly the correct password and nothing else. Please note that the password chosen in the kernel will depend on your username; so, you will likely not have the same password as your friends do.

Game Plan

Implementing the meltdown attack can be very finicky; so, we will guide you through it step by step. Please make sure each stage is working as you go, because, otherwise, the final result will be nearly impossible to debug. We will go through the following stages:

Stage 1: Cache Timing

Ultimately, we will need to be able to differentiate between a miss and a hit. The best way to do this is to determine a window where we’re fairly confident that the time taken is less than a miss AND at least as high as a hit. Specifically, we should choose a threshold that might have false negatives (missing a hit that’s an outlier), but rarely if ever false positives (deciding that a miss is a hit).

To determine a reasonable threshold for later phases, you should write a program in cache_timing.c that determines the average miss time and the average hit time across approximately 100000 trials. Each trial should:

We have written two functions for you which you will find useful:

Stage 2: A Guessing Game

Consider the following situation:

Can we use a side channel attack to recover which page was accessed? Figuring out how to solve this toy problem is a large step on the way to implementing the meltdown attack. The key idea is if NONE of the pages are in the cache before we access one page, then there will be a difference in timing between accessing the one page we accessed and the rest. In particular, the accessed page will have an access time of at most our threshold from Stage 1!

The beginning of this scenario is implemented in index_guesser.c. The provided function do_access() accesses exactly one page of the provided array. Your job in this stage is to fill in the two interesting functions:

Once these are implemented correctly, your program should consistently output the same number.

Stage 3: Unprotected User Memory String

In this stage, we will “recover” a string in user space through a side-channel attack.

From this stage onwards, we will assume that the “secrets” that we’re trying to recover are (1) five characters long and (2) made up entirely of capital letters.

You should copy flush_all_pages() and guess_accessed_page() from the previous stage into recover_local_secret.c. Then make the minor changes to satisfy new requirement that we’re only searching for capital letters (see above). Since the processor sometimes loads “boundary” pages, make sure to flush all the pages from 'A' - 1 to 'Z' + 1.

Now implement do_access() so that it reads a character from the secret string and accesses the page at the index corresponding to the character’s value. Use access_secret(i) to get the ith character of the secret string. Then use this character as an index into the page_t array. For example, if the character is 'A' (which is equivalent to 65), index 65 of the page_t array should be accessed. Make sure to use force_read() to ensure the address is accessed.

In main(), your program should determine each character in the secret string, one character at a time, by doing the following:

Stage 4: Protected User Memory String

The indirection in the previous part seems unnecessary: why bother using the page_t array at all when we can just access the secret characters directly? Well, what happens if the secret string is actually secret? In the next stage, the secret string will be stored in kernel memory, to which we do not (and should not) have access! In this stage, you will extend your attack from the previous stage to handle a segmentation fault that occurs when the secret string is accessed. (For now, we will cause a segmentation fault manually, but in the next stage, it will happen automatically when accessing kernel memory.) You will still be able to recover the secret using your hacking scillz!

Transfer your code from the previous stage into recover_protected_local_secret.c and make the following changes:

Stage 5: Meltdown! (80 points)

Write the final stage in exploit.c, copying most of your code from the previous stage. The only change is that do_access() needs to call get_kernel_data_address() to get the address of the secret string (in kernel memory). Calling get_kernel_data_address() will also take care of pulling the secret string into the cache. If your attack is not working, try making all your helper functions (except the signal handler), static inline functions to speed them up. If your attack is still not working, try a “threshold” of between 180 and 200 clocks.

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