In general users, don't have the necessary information to determine
whether late loading of a new microcode version is safe and does not
modify anything which the currently running kernel uses already, e.g.
removal of CPUID bits or behavioural changes of MSRs.

To address this issue, Intel has added a "minimum required version"
field to a previously reserved field in the microcode header.  Microcode
updates should only be applied if the current microcode version is equal
to, or greater than this minimum required version.

Thomas made some suggestions on how meta-data in the microcode file could
provide Linux with information to decide if the new microcode is suitable
candidate for late loading. But even the "simpler" option requires a lot of
metadata and corresponding kernel code to parse it, so the final suggestion
was to add the 'minimum required version' field in the header.

When microcode changes visible features, microcode will set the minimum
required version to its own revision which prevents late loading.

Old microcode blobs have the minimum revision field always set to 0, which
indicates that there is no information and the kernel considers it
unsafe.

This is a pure OS software mechanism. The hardware/firmware ignores this
header field.

For early loading there is no restriction because OS visible features
are enumerated after the early load and therefore a change has no
effect.

The check is always enabled, but by default not enforced. It can be
enforced via Kconfig or kernel command line.

If enforced, the kernel refuses to late load microcode with a minimum
required version field which is zero or when the currently loaded
microcode revision is smaller than the minimum required revision.

If not enforced the load happens independent of the revision check to
stay compatible with the existing behaviour, but it influences the
decision whether the kernel is tainted or not. If the check signals that
the late load is safe, then the kernel is not tainted.

Early loading is not affected by this.

[ tglx: Massaged changelog and fixed up the implementation ]
Suggested-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Ashok Raj <ashok.raj@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov (AMD) <bp@alien8.de>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20231002115903.776467264@linutronix.de