linux/Documentation/ABI
Mika Westerberg f67cf49117 thunderbolt: Add support for Internal Connection Manager (ICM)
Starting from Intel Falcon Ridge the internal connection manager running
on the Thunderbolt host controller has been supporting 4 security
levels. One reason for this is to prevent DMA attacks and only allow
connecting devices the user trusts.

The internal connection manager (ICM) is the preferred way of connecting
Thunderbolt devices over software only implementation typically used on
Macs. The driver communicates with ICM using special Thunderbolt ring 0
(control channel) messages. In order to handle these messages we add
support for the ICM messages to the control channel.

The security levels are as follows:

  none - No security, all tunnels are created automatically
  user - User needs to approve the device before tunnels are created
  secure - User need to approve the device before tunnels are created.
	   The device is sent a challenge on future connects to be able
	   to verify it is actually the approved device.
  dponly - Only Display Port and USB tunnels can be created and those
           are created automatically.

The security levels are typically configurable from the system BIOS and
by default it is set to "user" on many systems.

In this patch each Thunderbolt device will have either one or two new
sysfs attributes: authorized and key. The latter appears for devices
that support secure connect.

In order to identify the device the user can read identication
information, including UUID and name of the device from sysfs and based
on that make a decision to authorize the device. The device is
authorized by simply writing 1 to the "authorized" sysfs attribute. This
is following the USB bus device authorization mechanism. The secure
connect requires an additional challenge step (writing 2 to the
"authorized" attribute) in future connects when the key has already been
stored to the NVM of the device.

Non-ICM systems (before Alpine Ridge) continue to use the existing
functionality and the security level is set to none. For systems with
Alpine Ridge, even on Apple hardware, we will use ICM.

This code is based on the work done by Amir Levy and Michael Jamet.

Signed-off-by: Michael Jamet <michael.jamet@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Mika Westerberg <mika.westerberg@linux.intel.com>
Reviewed-by: Yehezkel Bernat <yehezkel.bernat@intel.com>
Reviewed-by: Andy Shevchenko <andriy.shevchenko@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Andreas Noever <andreas.noever@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
2017-06-09 11:42:43 +02:00
..
obsolete ACPI / scan: Drop support for force_remove 2017-04-13 03:51:47 +02:00
removed rfkill: Remove obsolete "claim" sysfs interface 2016-02-24 09:04:24 +01:00
stable docs-rst: fix usb cross-references 2017-04-11 14:41:29 -06:00
testing thunderbolt: Add support for Internal Connection Manager (ICM) 2017-06-09 11:42:43 +02:00
README docs: fix locations of several documents that got moved 2016-10-24 08:12:35 -02:00

This directory attempts to document the ABI between the Linux kernel and
userspace, and the relative stability of these interfaces.  Due to the
everchanging nature of Linux, and the differing maturity levels, these
interfaces should be used by userspace programs in different ways.

We have four different levels of ABI stability, as shown by the four
different subdirectories in this location.  Interfaces may change levels
of stability according to the rules described below.

The different levels of stability are:

  stable/
	This directory documents the interfaces that the developer has
	defined to be stable.  Userspace programs are free to use these
	interfaces with no restrictions, and backward compatibility for
	them will be guaranteed for at least 2 years.  Most interfaces
	(like syscalls) are expected to never change and always be
	available.

  testing/
	This directory documents interfaces that are felt to be stable,
	as the main development of this interface has been completed.
	The interface can be changed to add new features, but the
	current interface will not break by doing this, unless grave
	errors or security problems are found in them.  Userspace
	programs can start to rely on these interfaces, but they must be
	aware of changes that can occur before these interfaces move to
	be marked stable.  Programs that use these interfaces are
	strongly encouraged to add their name to the description of
	these interfaces, so that the kernel developers can easily
	notify them if any changes occur (see the description of the
	layout of the files below for details on how to do this.)

  obsolete/
  	This directory documents interfaces that are still remaining in
	the kernel, but are marked to be removed at some later point in
	time.  The description of the interface will document the reason
	why it is obsolete and when it can be expected to be removed.

  removed/
	This directory contains a list of the old interfaces that have
	been removed from the kernel.

Every file in these directories will contain the following information:

What:		Short description of the interface
Date:		Date created
KernelVersion:	Kernel version this feature first showed up in.
Contact:	Primary contact for this interface (may be a mailing list)
Description:	Long description of the interface and how to use it.
Users:		All users of this interface who wish to be notified when
		it changes.  This is very important for interfaces in
		the "testing" stage, so that kernel developers can work
		with userspace developers to ensure that things do not
		break in ways that are unacceptable.  It is also
		important to get feedback for these interfaces to make
		sure they are working in a proper way and do not need to
		be changed further.


How things move between levels:

Interfaces in stable may move to obsolete, as long as the proper
notification is given.

Interfaces may be removed from obsolete and the kernel as long as the
documented amount of time has gone by.

Interfaces in the testing state can move to the stable state when the
developers feel they are finished.  They cannot be removed from the
kernel tree without going through the obsolete state first.

It's up to the developer to place their interfaces in the category they
wish for it to start out in.


Notable bits of non-ABI, which should not under any circumstances be considered
stable:

- Kconfig.  Userspace should not rely on the presence or absence of any
  particular Kconfig symbol, in /proc/config.gz, in the copy of .config
  commonly installed to /boot, or in any invocation of the kernel build
  process.

- Kernel-internal symbols.  Do not rely on the presence, absence, location, or
  type of any kernel symbol, either in System.map files or the kernel binary
  itself.  See Documentation/process/stable-api-nonsense.rst.