Re: [PATCH v7 01/41] Documentation/x86: Add CET shadow stack description

Szabolcs Nagy
2023-03-07T16:15:07Z

The 03/07/2023 15:00, Florian Weimer wrote:
> * szabolcs:
>
> > changing/disabling the alt stack is not valid while a handler is
> > executing on it. if we don't allow jumping out and back to an
> > alt stack (swapcontext) then there can be only one alt stack
> > live per thread and change/disable can do the shadow stack free.
> >
> > if jump back is allowed (linux even makes it race-free with
> > SS_AUTODISARM) then the life-time of alt stack is extended
> > beyond change/disable (jump back to an unregistered alt stack).
> >
> > to support jump back to an alt stack the requirements are
> >
> > 1) user has to manage an alt shadow stack together with the alt
> > stack (requies user code change, not just libc).
> >
> > 2) kernel has to push a restore token on the thread shadow stack
> > on signal entry (at least in case of alt shadow stack, and
> > deal with corner cases around shadow stack overflow).
>
> We need to have a story for stackful coroutine switching as well, not
> just for sigaltstack. I hope that we can use OpenJDK (Project Loom) and
> QEMU as guinea pigs. If we have something that works for both,
> hopefully that covers a broad range of scenarios. Userspace
> coordination can eventually be handled by glibc; we can deallocate
> alternate stacks on thread exit fairly easily (at least compared to the
> current stack 8-).

for stackful coroutines we just need a way to

- allocate a shadow stack with a restore token on it.

- switch to a target shadow stack with a restore token on it,
while leaving behind a restore token on the old shadow stack.

this is supported via map_shadow_stack syscall and the
rstoressp, saveprevssp instruction pair.

otoh there can be many alt shadow stacks per thread alive if
we allow jump back (only one of them registered at a time) in
fact they can be jumped to even from another thread, so their
life-time is not tied to the thread (at least if we allow
swapcontext across threads) so i think the libc cannot manage
the alt shadow stacks, only user code can in the general case.

and in case a signal runs on an alt shadow stack, the restore
token can only be placed by the kernel on the old shadow stack.

thanks.