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Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2018 23:06:16 +0900
From: Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat@...nel.org>
To: Rick Edgecombe <rick.p.edgecombe@...el.com>
Cc: akpm@...ux-foundation.org, luto@...nel.org, will.deacon@....com,
linux-mm@...ck.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
kernel-hardening@...ts.openwall.com, naveen.n.rao@...ux.vnet.ibm.com,
anil.s.keshavamurthy@...el.com, davem@...emloft.net, rostedt@...dmis.org,
mingo@...hat.com, ast@...nel.org, daniel@...earbox.net, jeyu@...nel.org,
netdev@...r.kernel.org, ard.biesheuvel@...aro.org, jannh@...gle.com,
kristen@...ux.intel.com, dave.hansen@...el.com, deneen.t.dock@...el.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/2] Don’t leave executable
TLB entries to freed pages
On Tue, 27 Nov 2018 16:07:52 -0800
Rick Edgecombe <rick.p.edgecombe@...el.com> wrote:
> Sometimes when memory is freed via the module subsystem, an executable
> permissioned TLB entry can remain to a freed page. If the page is re-used to
> back an address that will receive data from userspace, it can result in user
> data being mapped as executable in the kernel. The root of this behavior is
> vfree lazily flushing the TLB, but not lazily freeing the underlying pages.
Good catch!
>
> There are sort of three categories of this which show up across modules, bpf,
> kprobes and ftrace:
For x86-64 kprobe, it sets the page NX and after that RW, and then release
via module_memfree. So I'm not sure it really happens on kprobes. (Of course
the default memory allocator is simpler so it may happen on other archs) But
interesting fixes.
Thank you,
>
> 1. When executable memory is touched and then immediatly freed
>
> This shows up in a couple error conditions in the module loader and BPF JIT
> compiler.
>
> 2. When executable memory is set to RW right before being freed
>
> In this case (on x86 and probably others) there will be a TLB flush when its
> set to RW and so since the pages are not touched between setting the
> flush and the free, it should not be in the TLB in most cases. So this
> category is not as big of a concern. However, techinically there is still a
> race where an attacker could try to keep it alive for a short window with a
> well timed out-of-bound read or speculative read, so ideally this could be
> blocked as well.
>
> 3. When executable memory is freed in an interrupt
>
> At least one example of this is the freeing of init sections in the module
> loader. Since vmalloc reuses the allocation for the work queue linked list
> node for the deferred frees, the memory actually gets touched as part of the
> vfree operation and so returns to the TLB even after the flush from resetting
> the permissions.
>
> I have only actually tested category 1, and identified 2 and 3 just from reading
> the code.
>
> To catch all of these, module_alloc for x86 is changed to use a new flag that
> instructs the unmap operation to flush the TLB before freeing the pages.
>
> If this solution seems good I can plug the flag in for other architectures that
> define PAGE_KERNEL_EXEC.
>
>
> Rick Edgecombe (2):
> vmalloc: New flag for flush before releasing pages
> x86/modules: Make x86 allocs to flush when free
>
> arch/x86/kernel/module.c | 4 ++--
> include/linux/vmalloc.h | 1 +
> mm/vmalloc.c | 13 +++++++++++--
> 3 files changed, 14 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
>
> --
> 2.17.1
>
--
Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat@...nel.org>
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