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Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2020 09:27:39 +0000
From: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com>
To: Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>, Hector Marco-Gisbert <hecmargi@....es>,
Will Deacon <will.deacon@....com>,
Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@...lanox.com>, Jann Horn <jannh@...gle.com>,
Russell King <linux@...linux.org.uk>, x86@...nel.org,
kernel-hardening@...ts.openwall.com,
linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
linux-kselftest@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 5/7] arm32/64, elf: Split READ_IMPLIES_EXEC from
executable GNU_STACK
On Mon, Feb 10, 2020 at 11:30:47AM -0800, Kees Cook wrote:
> The READ_IMPLIES_EXEC work-around was designed for old toolchains that
> lacked the ELF PT_GNU_STACK marking under the assumption that toolchains
> that couldn't specify executable permission flags for the stack may not
> know how to do it correctly for any memory region.
>
> This logic is sensible for having ancient binaries coexist in a system
> with possibly NX memory, but was implemented in a way that equated having
> a PT_GNU_STACK marked executable as being as "broken" as lacking the
> PT_GNU_STACK marking entirely. Things like unmarked assembly and stack
> trampolines may cause PT_GNU_STACK to need an executable bit, but they
> do not imply all mappings must be executable.
>
> This confusion has led to situations where modern programs with explicitly
> marked executable stack are forced into the READ_IMPLIES_EXEC state when
> no such thing is needed. (And leads to unexpected failures when mmap()ing
> regions of device driver memory that wish to disallow VM_EXEC[1].)
>
> In looking for other reasons for the READ_IMPLIES_EXEC behavior, Jann
> Horn noted that glibc thread stacks have always been marked RWX (until
> 2003 when they started tracking the PT_GNU_STACK flag instead[2]). And
> musl doesn't support executable stacks at all[3]. As such, no breakage
> for multithreaded applications is expected from this change.
>
> This changes arm32 and arm64 compat together, to keep behavior the same.
>
> [1] https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20190418055759.GA3155@mellanox.com
> [2] https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=commitdiff;h=54ee14b3882
> [3] https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20190423192534.GN23599@brightrain.aerifal.cx
>
> Suggested-by: Hector Marco-Gisbert <hecmargi@....es>
> Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>
Reviewed-by: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com>
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