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    • Emese Revfy's avatar
      gcc-plugins: Add latent_entropy plugin · 38addce8
      Emese Revfy authored
      
      This adds a new gcc plugin named "latent_entropy". It is designed to
      extract as much possible uncertainty from a running system at boot time as
      possible, hoping to capitalize on any possible variation in CPU operation
      (due to runtime data differences, hardware differences, SMP ordering,
      thermal timing variation, cache behavior, etc).
      
      At the very least, this plugin is a much more comprehensive example for
      how to manipulate kernel code using the gcc plugin internals.
      
      The need for very-early boot entropy tends to be very architecture or
      system design specific, so this plugin is more suited for those sorts
      of special cases. The existing kernel RNG already attempts to extract
      entropy from reliable runtime variation, but this plugin takes the idea to
      a logical extreme by permuting a global variable based on any variation
      in code execution (e.g. a different value (and permutation function)
      is used to permute the global based on loop count, case statement,
      if/then/else branching, etc).
      
      To do this, the plugin starts by inserting a local variable in every
      marked function. The plugin then adds logic so that the value of this
      variable is modified by randomly chosen operations (add, xor and rol) and
      random values (gcc generates separate static values for each location at
      compile time and also injects the stack pointer at runtime). The resulting
      value depends on the control flow path (e.g., loops and branches taken).
      
      Before the function returns, the plugin mixes this local variable into
      the latent_entropy global variable. The value of this global variable
      is added to the kernel entropy pool in do_one_initcall() and _do_fork(),
      though it does not credit any bytes of entropy to the pool; the contents
      of the global are just used to mix the pool.
      
      Additionally, the plugin can pre-initialize arrays with build-time
      random contents, so that two different kernel builds running on identical
      hardware will not have the same starting values.
      
      Signed-off-by: default avatarEmese Revfy <re.emese@gmail.com>
      [kees: expanded commit message and code comments]
      Signed-off-by: default avatarKees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
      38addce8
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