Re:Qubes Air: Generalizing the Qubes Architecture
by pjc50 on Monday January 29, 2018 @07:13AM
(#16257020)
The GPU is a PCIe/AGP "bus master", so it can usually initiate DMA transfers from host memory and read anything it likes. IOMMU blocks some of this, but is not a perfect defence. https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/150386/does-iom...
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Re:Qubes Air: Generalizing the Qubes Architecture
by effie on Monday January 29, 2018 @07:39AM
(#16257112)
Thanks, according to [1], it seems DMA is quite a 'backdoor', bypassing any memory management the kernel would do. But it is not clear to me whether this allows the attacker inside VM also to write into the forbidden regions of memory and thus either modify behaviour of the hypervisor or send information out via Internet.
Re:Qubes Air: Generalizing the Qubes Architecture
by gmueckl on Monday January 29, 2018 @08:46AM
(#16257429)
GPUs can definitely write to host memory. In some situations, this is the only way to the results of some operations that the GPU performed (e.g. grab framebuffer for screenshots or video recordings). Usually, it's the job of the driver to check for illegal copy target addresses.