Re: [PATCH v11 01/12] add support for Clang's Shadow Call Stack (SCS)

Sami Tolvanen
2020-04-27T20:46:00Z

On Fri, Apr 24, 2020 at 12:21:14PM +0100, Will Deacon wrote:
> Also, since you mentioned the lack of redzoning, isn't it a bit dodgy
> allocating blindly out of the kmem_cache? It means we don't have a redzone
> or a guard page, so if you can trigger something like a recursion bug then
> could you scribble past the SCS before the main stack overflows? Would this
> clobber somebody else's SCS?

I agree that allocating from a kmem_cache isn't ideal for safety. It's a
compromise to reduce memory overhead.

> The vmap version that I asked Sami to drop
> is at least better in this regard, although the guard page is at the wrong
> end of the stack and we just hope that the allocation below us didn't pass
> VM_NO_GUARD. Looks like the same story for vmap stack :/

SCS grows up and the guard page is after the allocation, so how is it at
the wrong end? Am I missing something here?

> If we split the pointer in two (base, offset) then we could leave the
> base live in the thread_info, not require alignment of the stacks (which
> may allow for unconditional redzoning?) and then just update the offset
> value on context switch, which could be trivially checked as part of the
> existing stack overflow checking on kernel entry.

I sent out v13 with split pointers, but I'm not sure it's convenient to
add an overflow check to kernel_ventry where the VMAP_STACK check is
done. I suppose I could add a check to kernel_entry after we load x18
from tsk. Thoughts?

Sami