From df0d6a4503a26508553510b4050eaa79f52e4e4e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Aleksey Veresov <aleksey@veresov.pro>
Date: Sun, 18 Oct 2020 18:22:31 +0300
Subject: Another step to release.

---
 speculation.txt | 90 ---------------------------------------------------------
 1 file changed, 90 deletions(-)
 delete mode 100644 speculation.txt

(limited to 'speculation.txt')

diff --git a/speculation.txt b/speculation.txt
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-This document explains potential effects of speculation, and how undesirable
-effects can be mitigated portably using common APIs.
-
-===========
-Speculation
-===========
-
-To improve performance and minimize average latencies, many contemporary CPUs
-employ speculative execution techniques such as branch prediction, performing
-work which may be discarded at a later stage.
-
-Typically speculative execution cannot be observed from architectural state,
-such as the contents of registers. However, in some cases it is possible to
-observe its impact on microarchitectural state, such as the presence or
-absence of data in caches. Such state may form side-channels which can be
-observed to extract secret information.
-
-For example, in the presence of branch prediction, it is possible for bounds
-checks to be ignored by code which is speculatively executed. Consider the
-following code:
-
-	int load_array(int *array, unsigned int index)
-	{
-		if (index >= MAX_ARRAY_ELEMS)
-			return 0;
-		else
-			return array[index];
-	}
-
-Which, on arm64, may be compiled to an assembly sequence such as:
-
-	CMP	<index>, #MAX_ARRAY_ELEMS
-	B.LT	less
-	MOV	<returnval>, #0
-	RET
-  less:
-	LDR	<returnval>, [<array>, <index>]
-	RET
-
-It is possible that a CPU mis-predicts the conditional branch, and
-speculatively loads array[index], even if index >= MAX_ARRAY_ELEMS. This
-value will subsequently be discarded, but the speculated load may affect
-microarchitectural state which can be subsequently measured.
-
-More complex sequences involving multiple dependent memory accesses may
-result in sensitive information being leaked. Consider the following
-code, building on the prior example:
-
-	int load_dependent_arrays(int *arr1, int *arr2, int index)
-	{
-		int val1, val2,
-
-		val1 = load_array(arr1, index);
-		val2 = load_array(arr2, val1);
-
-		return val2;
-	}
-
-Under speculation, the first call to load_array() may return the value
-of an out-of-bounds address, while the second call will influence
-microarchitectural state dependent on this value. This may provide an
-arbitrary read primitive.
-
-====================================
-Mitigating speculation side-channels
-====================================
-
-The kernel provides a generic API to ensure that bounds checks are
-respected even under speculation. Architectures which are affected by
-speculation-based side-channels are expected to implement these
-primitives.
-
-The array_index_nospec() helper in <linux/nospec.h> can be used to
-prevent information from being leaked via side-channels.
-
-A call to array_index_nospec(index, size) returns a sanitized index
-value that is bounded to [0, size) even under cpu speculation
-conditions.
-
-This can be used to protect the earlier load_array() example:
-
-	int load_array(int *array, unsigned int index)
-	{
-		if (index >= MAX_ARRAY_ELEMS)
-			return 0;
-		else {
-			index = array_index_nospec(index, MAX_ARRAY_ELEMS);
-			return array[index];
-		}
-	}
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