Examining Pointer Authentication on the iPhone XS
https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2019/02/examining-pointer-authentication-on.html [googleprojectzero.blogspot.com]
2019-02-01 22:29
Among the most exciting security features introduced with ARMv8.3-A is Pointer Authentication, a feature where the upper bits of a pointer are used to store a Pointer Authentication Code (PAC), which is essentially a cryptographic signature on the pointer value and some additional context. Special instructions have been introduced to add an authentication code to a pointer and to verify an authenticated pointer’s PAC and restore the original pointer value. This gives the system a way to make cryptographically strong guarantees about the likelihood that certain pointers have been tampered with by attackers, which offers the possibility of greatly improving application security.
Despite these flaws, PAC remains a solid and worthwhile mitigation. Apple’s hardening of PAC in the A12 SoC, which was clearly designed to protect against kernel attackers with read/write, meant that I did not find a systematic break in the design and had to rely on signing gadgets, which are easy to patch via software. As with any complex new mitigation, loopholes are not uncommon in the first few iterations. However, given the fragility of the current bypass technique (relying on, among other things, the single IOUserClient class that allows us to overwrite its IOExternalTrap, one of a very small number of usable PACIZA gadgets, and a handful of non-PAC’d JOP gadgets introduced by obfuscation), I believe it’s possible for Apple to harden their implementation to the point that strong forgery bypasses become rare.