summaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/Documentation/security/secrets/coco.rst
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2026-08-23 13:28:57 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2026-08-23 13:28:57 -0700
commit4352b8aee98005853aa63f57d6377282de17a33f (patch)
tree27614d7a9ef05c32d089004e104364ce42324837 /Documentation/security/secrets/coco.rst
downloadlinux-stable-4352b8aee98005853aa63f57d6377282de17a33f.tar.gz
linux-stable-4352b8aee98005853aa63f57d6377282de17a33f.zip
Merge tag 'i3c/for-7.3' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/i3c/linuxgrafted
Pull I3C updates from Alexandre Belloni: "A new driver this cycle, for the AMD AXI I3C controller. There are also new features such as IBI wakeup support, SETAASA device discovery and ACPI support for the the DAA methods, meaning we can now communicate with the SPD devices on DDR5 modules. New driver: - AMD AXI I3C master controller Subsystem: - I3C Common Command Code (CCC) handling improvements, especially around GET CCCs - SETAASA device discovery support - ACPI support for all existing DAA methods like SETDASA, SETNEWDA as well as I2C devices on I3C bus - IBI-based wakeup support Drivers: - dw: SETAASA support - mipi-i3c-hci: advertise IBI wakeup capability, AMD_PT I3C controller support, PIO queue management support for HCI v1.2 - renesas: improve suspend to RAM support, add runtime PM support" * tag 'i3c/for-7.3' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/i3c/linux: (70 commits) i3c: dw: reduce do_daa time if there's no client i3c: mipi-i3c-hci: Add support for AMD_PT I3C controller i3c: mipi-i3c-hci: Add PIO queue management support for HCI v1.2 i3c: mipi-i3c-hci: Fix missing STAT_IBI_STATUS_THLD in PIO mode i3c: dw: rename "pclk" to "apb" to match dt-binding i3c: dw: make struct dw_i3c_cmd smaller i3c: dw: use COMMAND_PORT_TRANSFER_ARG instead of hardcoding i3c: renesas: Don't register devices when ENTDAA times out i3c: master: dw-i3c-master: fix OD timing for first broadcast i3c: mipi-i3c-hci: Advertise IBI wakeup capability i3c: mipi-i3c-hci: Factor out i3c_hci_sysdev() i3c: mipi-i3c-hci-pci: Propagate I3C wakeup requirements to PCI i3c: master: Reject IBI requests from non-IBI-capable devices i3c: master: Add helper to query bus wakeup requirements i3c: master: Report wakeup events for IBIs i3c: master: Support IBI-based wakeup capability i3c: master: Fix potential UAF in i3c_device_match() i3c: master: Fix potential UAF in i3c_device_uevent() i3c: Make dev->desc locking assumptions explicit i3c: master: Fix use-after-free of master->this ...
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/security/secrets/coco.rst')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/security/secrets/coco.rst103
1 files changed, 103 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/security/secrets/coco.rst b/Documentation/security/secrets/coco.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..a1210db8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/security/secrets/coco.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,103 @@
+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+==============================
+Confidential Computing secrets
+==============================
+
+This document describes how Confidential Computing secret injection is handled
+from the firmware to the operating system, in the EFI driver and the efi_secret
+kernel module.
+
+
+Introduction
+============
+
+Confidential Computing (coco) hardware such as AMD SEV (Secure Encrypted
+Virtualization) allows guest owners to inject secrets into the VMs
+memory without the host/hypervisor being able to read them. In SEV,
+secret injection is performed early in the VM launch process, before the
+guest starts running.
+
+The efi_secret kernel module allows userspace applications to access these
+secrets via securityfs.
+
+
+Secret data flow
+================
+
+The guest firmware may reserve a designated memory area for secret injection,
+and publish its location (base GPA and length) in the EFI configuration table
+under a ``LINUX_EFI_COCO_SECRET_AREA_GUID`` entry
+(``adf956ad-e98c-484c-ae11-b51c7d336447``). This memory area should be marked
+by the firmware as ``EFI_RESERVED_TYPE``, and therefore the kernel should not
+be use it for its own purposes.
+
+During the VM's launch, the virtual machine manager may inject a secret to that
+area. In AMD SEV and SEV-ES this is performed using the
+``KVM_SEV_LAUNCH_SECRET`` command (see [sev]_). The structure of the injected
+Guest Owner secret data should be a GUIDed table of secret values; the binary
+format is described in ``drivers/virt/coco/efi_secret/efi_secret.c`` under
+"Structure of the EFI secret area".
+
+On kernel start, the kernel's EFI driver saves the location of the secret area
+(taken from the EFI configuration table) in the ``efi.coco_secret`` field.
+Later it checks if the secret area is populated: it maps the area and checks
+whether its content begins with ``EFI_SECRET_TABLE_HEADER_GUID``
+(``1e74f542-71dd-4d66-963e-ef4287ff173b``). If the secret area is populated,
+the EFI driver will autoload the efi_secret kernel module, which exposes the
+secrets to userspace applications via securityfs. The details of the
+efi_secret filesystem interface are in [secrets-coco-abi]_.
+
+
+Application usage example
+=========================
+
+Consider a guest performing computations on encrypted files. The Guest Owner
+provides the decryption key (= secret) using the secret injection mechanism.
+The guest application reads the secret from the efi_secret filesystem and
+proceeds to decrypt the files into memory and then performs the needed
+computations on the content.
+
+In this example, the host can't read the files from the disk image
+because they are encrypted. Host can't read the decryption key because
+it is passed using the secret injection mechanism (= secure channel).
+Host can't read the decrypted content from memory because it's a
+confidential (memory-encrypted) guest.
+
+Here is a simple example for usage of the efi_secret module in a guest
+to which an EFI secret area with 4 secrets was injected during launch::
+
+ # ls -la /sys/kernel/security/secrets/coco
+ total 0
+ drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Jun 28 11:54 .
+ drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 0 Jun 28 11:54 ..
+ -r--r----- 1 root root 0 Jun 28 11:54 736870e5-84f0-4973-92ec-06879ce3da0b
+ -r--r----- 1 root root 0 Jun 28 11:54 83c83f7f-1356-4975-8b7e-d3a0b54312c6
+ -r--r----- 1 root root 0 Jun 28 11:54 9553f55d-3da2-43ee-ab5d-ff17f78864d2
+ -r--r----- 1 root root 0 Jun 28 11:54 e6f5a162-d67f-4750-a67c-5d065f2a9910
+
+ # hd /sys/kernel/security/secrets/coco/e6f5a162-d67f-4750-a67c-5d065f2a9910
+ 00000000 74 68 65 73 65 2d 61 72 65 2d 74 68 65 2d 6b 61 |these-are-the-ka|
+ 00000010 74 61 2d 73 65 63 72 65 74 73 00 01 02 03 04 05 |ta-secrets......|
+ 00000020 06 07 |..|
+ 00000022
+
+ # rm /sys/kernel/security/secrets/coco/e6f5a162-d67f-4750-a67c-5d065f2a9910
+
+ # ls -la /sys/kernel/security/secrets/coco
+ total 0
+ drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Jun 28 11:55 .
+ drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 0 Jun 28 11:54 ..
+ -r--r----- 1 root root 0 Jun 28 11:54 736870e5-84f0-4973-92ec-06879ce3da0b
+ -r--r----- 1 root root 0 Jun 28 11:54 83c83f7f-1356-4975-8b7e-d3a0b54312c6
+ -r--r----- 1 root root 0 Jun 28 11:54 9553f55d-3da2-43ee-ab5d-ff17f78864d2
+
+
+References
+==========
+
+See [sev-api-spec]_ for more info regarding SEV ``LAUNCH_SECRET`` operation.
+
+.. [sev] Documentation/virt/kvm/x86/amd-memory-encryption.rst
+.. [secrets-coco-abi] Documentation/ABI/testing/securityfs-secrets-coco
+.. [sev-api-spec] https://www.amd.com/system/files/TechDocs/55766_SEV-KM_API_Specification.pdf