• Luck, Tony's avatar
    efivarfs: Limit the rate for non-root to read files · bef3efbe
    Luck, Tony authored
    Each read from a file in efivarfs results in two calls to EFI
    (one to get the file size, another to get the actual data).
    
    On X86 these EFI calls result in broadcast system management
    interrupts (SMI) which affect performance of the whole system.
    A malicious user can loop performing reads from efivarfs bringing
    the system to its knees.
    
    Linus suggested per-user rate limit to solve this.
    
    So we add a ratelimit structure to "user_struct" and initialize
    it for the root user for no limit. When allocating user_struct for
    other users we set the limit to 100 per second. This could be used
    for other places that want to limit the rate of some detrimental
    user action.
    
    In efivarfs if the limit is exceeded when reading, we take an
    interruptible nap for 50ms and check the rate limit again.
    Signed-off-by: default avatarTony Luck <tony.luck@intel.com>
    Acked-by: default avatarArd Biesheuvel <ard.biesheuvel@linaro.org>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
    bef3efbe
user.c 5.62 KB