Re: [PATCH 18/18] arm64: implement Shadow Call Stack

Sami Tolvanen
2019-10-18T17:55:12Z

On Fri, Oct 18, 2019 at 10:13 AM Jann Horn <jannh@google.com> wrote:
> These things should probably be __always_inline or something like
> that? If the compiler decides not to inline them (e.g. when called
> from scs_thread_switch()), stuff will blow up, right?

Correct. I'll change these to __always_inline in v2. I think there
might be other places in the kernel where not inlining a static inline
function would break things, but there's no need to add more.

> This is different from the intended protection level according to
> <https://clang.llvm.org/docs/ShadowCallStack.html#security>, which
> talks about "a runtime that avoids exposing the address of the shadow
> call stack to attackers that can read arbitrary memory". Of course,
> that's extremely hard to implement in the context of the kernel, where
> you can see all the memory management data structures and all physical
> memory.

Yes, the security guarantees in the kernel are different as hiding
shadow stack pointers is more challenging.

> You might want to write something in the cover letter about what the
> benefits of this mechanism compared to STACKPROTECTOR are in the
> context of the kernel, including a specific description of which types
> of attacker capabilities this is supposed to defend against.

Sure, I'll add something about that in v2. Thanks.

Sami