Re: [PATCH 00/35] Shadow stacks for userspace

Mike Rapoport
2022-06-09T18:05:00Z

On Wed, Jun 01, 2022 at 05:24:26PM +0000, Edgecombe, Rick P wrote:
> On Wed, 2022-06-01 at 11:06 +0300, Mike Rapoport wrote:
> > > Yea, having something working is really great. My only hesitancy is
> > > that, per a discussion on the LAM patchset, we are going to make
> > > this
> > > enabling API CET only (same semantics for though). I suppose the
> > > locking API arch_prctl() could still be support other arch
> > > features,
> > > but it might be a second CET only regset. It's not the end of the
> > > world.
> >
> > The support for CET in criu is anyway experimental for now, if the
> > kernel
> > API will be slightly different in the end, we'll update criu.
> > The important things are the ability to control tracee shadow stack
> > from ptrace, the ability to map the shadow stack at fixed address and
> > the
> > ability to control the features at least from ptrace.
> > As long as we have APIs that provide those, it should be Ok.
> >
> > > I guess the other consideration is tieing CRIU to glibc
> > > peculiarities.
> > > Like even if we fix glibc, then CRIU may not work with some other
> > > libc
> > > or app that force disables for some weird reason. Is it supposed to
> > > be
> > > libc-agnostic?
> >
> > Actually using the ptrace to control the CET features does not tie
> > criu to
> > glibc. The current proposal for the arch_prctl() allows libc to lock
> > CET
> > features and having a ptrace call to control the lock makes criu
> > agnostic
> > to libc behaviour.
>
> From staring at the glibc code, I'm suspicious something was weird with
> your test setup, as I don't think it should be locking. But I guess to
> be completely proper you would need to save and restore the lock state
> anyway. So, ok yea, on balance probably better to have an extra
> interface.
>
> Should we make it a GET/SET interface?

Yes, I think so.

--
Sincerely yours,
Mike.