Re: [PATCH] LDT improvements

[Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>]

* Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> wrote:

> On Fri, 8 Dec 2017, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> > * Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> wrote:
> > 
> > > On Fri, 8 Dec 2017, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> > > > * Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net> wrote:
> > > > > I don't love mucking with user address space.  I'm also quite nervous about 
> > > > > putting it in our near anything that could pass an access_ok check, since we're 
> > > > > totally screwed if the bad guys can figure out how to write to it.
> > > > 
> > > > Hm, robustness of the LDT address wrt. access_ok() is a valid concern.
> > > > 
> > > > Can we have vmas with high addresses, in the vmalloc space for example?
> > > > IIRC the GPU code has precedents in that area.
> > > > 
> > > > Since this is x86-64, limitation of the vmalloc() space is not an issue.
> > > > 
> > > > I like Thomas's solution:
> > > > 
> > > >  - have the LDT in a regular mmap space vma (hence per process ASLR randomized), 
> > > >    but with the system bit set.
> > > > 
> > > >  - That would be an advantage even for non-PTI kernels, because mmap() is probably 
> > > >    more randomized than kmalloc().
> > > 
> > > Randomization is pointless as long as you can get the LDT address in user
> > > space, i.e. w/o UMIP.
> > 
> > But with UMIP unprivileged user-space won't be able to get the linear address of 
> > the LDT. Now it's written out in /proc/self/maps.
> 
> We can expose it nameless like other VMAs, but then it's 128k sized so it
> can be figured out. But when it's RO then it's not really a problem, even
> the kernel can't write to it.

Yeah, ok. I don't think we should hide it - if it's in the vma space it should be 
listed in the 'maps' file, and with a descriptive name.

Thanks,

	Ingo