Re: [PATCH v7 24/41] mm: Don't allow write GUPs to shadow stack memory

Edgecombe, Rick P
2023-03-06T18:36:29Z

On Mon, 2023-03-06 at 10:15 -0800, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 6, 2023 at 5:10 AM Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de> wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, Feb 27, 2023 at 02:29:40PM -0800, Rick Edgecombe wrote:
> > > The x86 Control-flow Enforcement Technology (CET) feature
> > > includes a new
> > > type of memory called shadow stack. This shadow stack memory has
> > > some
> > > unusual properties, which requires some core mm changes to
> > > function
> > > properly.
> > >
> > > Shadow stack memory is writable only in very specific, controlled
> > > ways.
> > > However, since it is writable, the kernel treats it as such. As a
> > > result
> >
> >
> > ^
> >
> > ,
> >
> > > there remain many ways for userspace to trigger the kernel to
> > > write to
> > > shadow stack's via get_user_pages(, FOLL_WRITE) operations. To
> > > make this a
>
> Is there an alternate mechanism, or do we still want to allow
> FOLL_FORCE so that debuggers can write it?

Yes, GDB shadow stack support uses it via both ptrace poke and
/proc/pid/mem apparently. So some ability to write through is needed
for debuggers. But not CRIU actually. It uses WRSS.

There was also some discussion[0] previously about how apps might
prefer to block /proc/self/mem for general security reasons. Blocking
shadow stack writes while you allow text writes is probably not that
impactful security-wise. So I thought it would be better to leave the
logic simpler. Then when /proc/self/mem could be locked down per the
discussion, shadow stack can be locked down the same way.

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