Re: [PATCH 31/32] x86, pkeys: execute-only support

[Dave Hansen <dave@sr71.net>]

On 12/14/2015 12:05 PM, Kees Cook wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 11:06 AM, Dave Hansen <dave@sr71.net> wrote:
>> > From: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>
>> > Protection keys provide new page-based protection in hardware.
>> > But, they have an interesting attribute: they only affect data
>> > accesses and never affect instruction fetches.  That means that
>> > if we set up some memory which is set as "access-disabled" via
>> > protection keys, we can still execute from it.
...
>> > I haven't found any userspace that does this today.
> To realistically take advantage of this, it sounds like the linker
> would need to know to keep bss and data page-aligned away from text,
> and then set text to PROT_EXEC only?
> 
> Do you have any example linker scripts for this?

Nope.  My linker-fu is weak.

Can we even depend on the linker by itself?  Even if the sections were
marked --x, we can't actually use them with those permissions unless we
have protection keys.

Do we need some special tag on the section to tell the linker to map it
as --x under some conditions and r-x for others?

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