Re: [PATCH v6 00/30] pkeys-based page table hardening

David Hildenbrand (Arm)
2026-04-15T12:49:11Z

On 2/27/26 18:54, Kevin Brodsky wrote:
> NEW in v6: support for large block mappings through a dedicated page table
> allocator (patch 14-17)

Heh, I had to read till the very end to realize that this is an RFC, and
then saw your other mail.

I can recommend using b4 for patch management, where you can configure a
sticky prefix through

b4 prep --set-prefixes RFC

And using "b4 send" to automate all the rest.

>
> Threat model
> ============
>
> The proposed scheme aims at mitigating data-only attacks (e.g.
> use-after-free/cross-cache attacks). In other words, it is assumed that
> control flow is not corrupted, and that the attacker does not achieve
> arbitrary code execution. Nothing prevents the pkey register from being
> set to its most permissive state - the assumption is that the register
> is only modified on legitimate code paths.
>
> A few related notes:
>
> - Functions that set the pkey register are all implemented inline.
> Besides performance considerations, this is meant to avoid creating
> a function that can be used as a straightforward gadget to set the
> pkey register to an arbitrary value.
>
> - kpkeys_set_level() only accepts a compile-time constant as argument,
> as a variable could be manipulated by an attacker. This could be
> relaxed but it seems unlikely that a variable kpkeys level would be
> needed in practice.
>

I see a lot of value for that also as a debugging mechanism. I hear that
other people had private patches that would attempt to only map leaf
pages in the direct map in pte_offset_map_lock() and friends. I assume
there are some tricky bits to that (concurrent access to page tables).

What's the general take regarding the thread model you describe vs. MTE?

Regarding use-after-free, I'd assume KASAN would achieve something
similar. And with MTE "reasonably" fast. Or what is the biggest
difference you see, there?

I'd assume that one difference would be, that not even match-all
pointers could accidentally modify page tables.

In the future, would you think that both mechanisms (pkey PT table
protection + KASAN) would be active at the same time, or wouldn't there
really be a lot of value in having both enabled?

[...]

>
>
> Open questions
> ==============
>
> A few aspects in this RFC that are debatable and/or worth discussing:
>
> - Can the pkeys block allocator be abstracted into something more
> generic? This seems desirable considering other use-cases for changing
> attributes of regions of the linear map, but the handling of page
> tables while splitting may be difficult to integrate in a generic
> allocator.
>
> - There is currently no restriction on how kpkeys levels map to pkeys
> permissions. A typical approach is to allocate one pkey per level and
> make it writable at that level only. As the number of levels
> increases, we may however run out of pkeys, especially on arm64 (just
> 8 pkeys with POE). Depending on the use-cases, it may be acceptable to
> use the same pkey for the data associated to multiple levels.
>
>
> Any comment or feedback is highly appreciated, be it on the high-level
> approach or implementation choices!

How crucial would the dedicated page table allocator be for a first up
streamed version?

Assuming we introduce this as a debugging feature first, it would be
perfectly reasonable to just disallow large block mappings in the direct
map when enabled.

That means, we could merge basic support first and think about how to
deal with page tables in a different way with most of the pkey details
out of the picture.

--
Cheers,

David