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* [merged mm-nonmm-stable] kcov-use-write-memory-barrier-after-memcpy-in-kcov_move_area.patch removed from -mm tree
@ 2025-09-14  0:34 Andrew Morton
  0 siblings, 0 replies; only message in thread
From: Andrew Morton @ 2025-09-14  0:34 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: mm-commits, tglx, glider, elver, dvyukov, corbet, arnd,
	andreyknvl, soham.bagchi, akpm


The quilt patch titled
     Subject: kcov: use write memory barrier after memcpy() in kcov_move_area()
has been removed from the -mm tree.  Its filename was
     kcov-use-write-memory-barrier-after-memcpy-in-kcov_move_area.patch

This patch was dropped because it was merged into the mm-nonmm-stable branch
of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/mm

------------------------------------------------------
From: Soham Bagchi <soham.bagchi@utah.edu>
Subject: kcov: use write memory barrier after memcpy() in kcov_move_area()
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2025 12:43:17 -0600

KCOV Remote uses two separate memory buffers, one private to the kernel
space (kcov_remote_areas) and the second one shared between user and
kernel space (kcov->area).  After every pair of kcov_remote_start() and
kcov_remote_stop(), the coverage data collected in the kcov_remote_areas
is copied to kcov->area so the user can read the collected coverage data. 
This memcpy() is located in kcov_move_area().

The load/store pattern on the kernel-side [1] is:

```
/* dst_area === kcov->area, dst_area[0] is where the count is stored */
dst_len = READ_ONCE(*(unsigned long *)dst_area);
...
memcpy(dst_entries, src_entries, ...);
...
WRITE_ONCE(*(unsigned long *)dst_area, dst_len + entries_moved);
```

And for the user [2]:

```
/* cover is equivalent to kcov->area */
n = __atomic_load_n(&cover[0], __ATOMIC_RELAXED);
```

Without a write-memory barrier, the atomic load for the user can
potentially read fresh values of the count stored at cover[0], but
continue to read stale coverage data from the buffer itself.  Hence, we
recommend adding a write-memory barrier between the memcpy() and the
WRITE_ONCE() in kcov_move_area().

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20250728184318.1839137-1-soham.bagchi@utah.edu
Link: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/tree/kernel/kcov.c?h=master#n978 [1]
Link: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/tree/Documentation/dev-tools/kcov.rst#n364 [2]
Signed-off-by: Soham Bagchi <soham.bagchi@utah.edu>
Reviewed-by: Marco Elver <elver@google.com>
Cc: Alexander Potapenko <glider@google.com>
Cc: Andrey Konovalov <andreyknvl@gmail.com>
Cc: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
Cc: Dmitriy Vyukov <dvyukov@google.com>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: Thomas Gleinxer <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
---

 kernel/kcov.c |    9 +++++++++
 1 file changed, 9 insertions(+)

--- a/kernel/kcov.c~kcov-use-write-memory-barrier-after-memcpy-in-kcov_move_area
+++ a/kernel/kcov.c
@@ -978,6 +978,15 @@ static void kcov_move_area(enum kcov_mod
 	memcpy(dst_entries, src_entries, bytes_to_move);
 	entries_moved = bytes_to_move >> entry_size_log;
 
+	/*
+	 * A write memory barrier is required here, to ensure
+	 * that the writes from the memcpy() are visible before
+	 * the count is updated. Without this, it is possible for
+	 * a user to observe a new count value but stale
+	 * coverage data.
+	 */
+	smp_wmb();
+
 	switch (mode) {
 	case KCOV_MODE_TRACE_PC:
 		WRITE_ONCE(*(unsigned long *)dst_area, dst_len + entries_moved);
_

Patches currently in -mm which might be from soham.bagchi@utah.edu are



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