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Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2019 13:51:44 -0800
From: Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>
To: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>
Cc: "Reshetova, Elena" <elena.reshetova@...el.com>,
"kernel-hardening@...ts.openwall.com" <kernel-hardening@...ts.openwall.com>, "luto@...nel.org" <luto@...nel.org>,
"tglx@...utronix.de" <tglx@...utronix.de>, "mingo@...hat.com" <mingo@...hat.com>, "bp@...en8.de" <bp@...en8.de>,
"tytso@....edu" <tytso@....edu>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH] x86/entry/64: randomize kernel stack offset upon
system call
On Fri, Feb 8, 2019 at 6:26 AM Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 08, 2019 at 01:20:09PM +0000, Reshetova, Elena wrote:
> > > On Fri, Feb 08, 2019 at 02:15:49PM +0200, Elena Reshetova wrote:
>
> > >
> > > Why can't we change the stack offset periodically from an interrupt or
> > > so, and then have every later entry use that.
> >
> > Hm... This sounds more complex conceptually - we cannot touch
> > stack when it is in use, so we have to periodically probe for a
> > good time (when process is in userspace I guess) to change it from an interrupt?
> > IMO trampoline stack provides such a good clean place for doing it and we
> > have stackleak there doing stack cleanup, so would make sense to keep
> > these features operating together.
>
> The idea was to just change a per-cpu (possible per-task if you ctxsw
> it) offset that is used on entry to offset the stack.
>
> So only entries after the change will have the updated offset, any
> in-progress syscalls will continue with their current offset and will be
> unaffected.
These defenses tend to need randomization between syscalls to actually
disrupt an attack. (Take for example, the attack I demonstrated with
uninitialized stack variables[1], which used back-to-back syscalls,
one to prime the memory contents followed by one to use those values
for an exploit.)
(Though I would say that with CONFIG_GCC_PLUGIN_STRUCTLEAK_BYREF_ALL=y
the uninitialized variables issue.)
-Kees
[1] https://www.defcon.org/images/defcon-19/dc-19-presentations/Cook/DEFCON-19-Cook-Kernel-Exploitation.pdf
slide 21
--
Kees Cook
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