Re: [PATCH v4 37/39] x86: Add PTRACE interface for shadow stack

Kees Cook
2022-12-03T02:55:56Z

On Fri, Dec 02, 2022 at 04:36:04PM -0800, Rick Edgecombe wrote:
> From: Yu-cheng Yu <yu-cheng.yu@intel.com>
>
> Some applications (like GDB) would like to tweak shadow stack state via
> ptrace. This allows for existing functionality to continue to work for
> seized shadow stack applications. Provide an regset interface for
> manipulating the shadow stack pointer (SSP).
>
> There is already ptrace functionality for accessing xstate, but this
> does not include supervisor xfeatures. So there is not a completely
> clear place for where to put the shadow stack state. Adding it to the
> user xfeatures regset would complicate that code, as it currently shares
> logic with signals which should not have supervisor features.
>
> Don't add a general supervisor xfeature regset like the user one,
> because it is better to maintain flexibility for other supervisor
> xfeatures to define their own interface. For example, an xfeature may
> decide not to expose all of it's state to userspace, as is actually the
> case for shadow stack ptrace functionality. A lot of enum values remain
> to be used, so just put it in dedicated shadow stack regset.
>
> The only downside to not having a generic supervisor xfeature regset,
> is that apps need to be enlightened of any new supervisor xfeature
> exposed this way (i.e. they can't try to have generic save/restore
> logic). But maybe that is a good thing, because they have to think
> through each new xfeature instead of encountering issues when new a new
> supervisor xfeature was added.
>
> By adding a shadow stack regset, it also has the effect of including the
> shadow stack state in a core dump, which could be useful for debugging.
>
> The shadow stack specific xstate includes the SSP, and the shadow stack
> and WRSS enablement status. Enabling shadow stack or wrss in the kernel
> involves more than just flipping the bit. The kernel is made aware that
> it has to do extra things when cloning or handling signals. That logic
> is triggered off of separate feature enablement state kept in the task
> struct. So the flipping on HW shadow stack enforcement without notifying
> the kernel to change its behavior would severely limit what an application
> could do without crashing, and the results would depend on kernel
> internal implementation details. There is also no known use for controlling
> this state via prtace today. So only expose the SSP, which is something
> that userspace already has indirect control over.
>
> Tested-by: Pengfei Xu <pengfei.xu@intel.com>
> Tested-by: John Allen <john.allen@amd.com>
> Co-developed-by: Rick Edgecombe <rick.p.edgecombe@intel.com>
> Signed-off-by: Rick Edgecombe <rick.p.edgecombe@intel.com>

Reviewed-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>

--
Kees Cook