Re: [PATCH bpf-next 0/1] arm64: Add BPF exception tables

[Ravi Bangoria <ravi.bangoria@linux.ibm.com>]

Hi Alexei,

On 7/28/20 8:51 PM, Jean-Philippe Brucker wrote:
> The following patch adds support for BPF_PROBE_MEM on arm64. The
> implementation is simple but I wanted to give a bit of background first.
> If you're familiar with recent BPF development you can skip to the patch
> (or fact-check the following blurb).
> 
> BPF programs used for tracing can inspect any of the traced function's
> arguments and follow pointers in struct members. Traditionally the BPF
> program would get a struct pt_regs as argument and cast the register
> values to the appropriate struct pointer. The BPF verifier would mandate
> that any memory access uses the bpf_probe_read() helper, to suppress
> page faults (see samples/bpf/tracex1_kern.c).
> 
> With BPF Type Format embedded into the kernel (CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO_BTF),
> the verifier can now check the type of any access performed by a BPF
> program. It rejects for example programs that cast to a different
> structure and perform out-of-bounds accesses, or programs that attempt
> to dereference something that isn't a pointer, or that hasn't gone
> through a NULL check.
> 
> As this makes tracing programs safer, the verifier now allows loading
> programs that access struct members without bpf_probe_read(). It is
> however still possible to trigger page faults. For example in the
> following example with which I've tested this patch, the verifier does
> not mandate a NULL check for the second-level pointer:
> 
> /*
>   * From tools/testing/selftests/bpf/progs/bpf_iter_task.c
>   * dump_task() is called for each task.
>   */
> SEC("iter/task")
> int dump_task(struct bpf_iter__task *ctx)
> {
> 	struct seq_file *seq = ctx->meta->seq;
> 	struct task_struct *task = ctx->task;
> 
> 	/* Program would be rejected without this check */
> 	if (task == NULL)
> 		return 0;
> 
> 	/*
> 	 * However the verifier does not currently mandate
> 	 * checking task->mm, and the following faults for kernel
> 	 * threads.
> 	 */
> 	BPF_SEQ_PRINTF(seq, "pid=%d vm=%d", task->pid, task->mm->total_vm);
> 	return 0;
> }
> 
> Even if it checked this case, the verifier couldn't guarantee that all
> accesses are safe since kernel structures could in theory contain
> garbage or error pointers. So to allow fast access without
> bpf_probe_read(), a JIT implementation must support BPF exception
> tables. For each access to a BTF pointer, the JIT generates an entry
> into an exception table appended to the BPF program. If the access
> faults at runtime, the handler skips the faulting instruction. The
> example above will display vm=0 for kernel threads.

I'm trying with the example above (task->mm->total_vm) on x86 machine
with bpf/master (11fc79fc9f2e3) plus commit 4c5de127598e1 ("bpf: Emit
explicit NULL pointer checks for PROBE_LDX instructions.") *reverted*,
I'm seeing the app getting killed with error in dmesg.

   $ sudo bpftool iter pin bpf_iter_task.o /sys/fs/bpf/task
   $ sudo cat /sys/fs/bpf/task
   Killed

   $ dmesg
   [  188.810020] BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 00000000000000c8
   [  188.810030] #PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode
   [  188.810034] #PF: error_code(0x0000) - not-present page

IIUC, this should be handled by bpf exception table rather than killing
the app. Am I missing anything?

Ravi

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