Re: [PATCH 1/6] PKEY: Introduce PKEY_ENFORCE_API flag

Jeff Xu
2023-05-16T23:56:14Z

On Tue, May 16, 2023 at 4:14 PM Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@intel.com> wrote:
>
> On 5/15/23 06:05, jeffxu@chromium.org wrote:
> > --- a/arch/x86/mm/pkeys.c
> > +++ b/arch/x86/mm/pkeys.c
> > @@ -20,7 +20,7 @@ int __execute_only_pkey(struct mm_struct *mm)
> > /* Do we need to assign a pkey for mm's execute-only maps? */
> > if (execute_only_pkey == -1) {
> > /* Go allocate one to use, which might fail */
> > - execute_only_pkey = mm_pkey_alloc(mm);
> > + execute_only_pkey = mm_pkey_alloc(mm, 0);
> > if (execute_only_pkey < 0)
> > return -1;
> > need_to_set_mm_pkey = true;
>
> In your threat model, what mechanism prevents the attacker from
> modifying executable mappings?
>
> I was trying to figure out if the implicit execute-only pkey should have
> the PKEY_ENFORCE_API bit set. I think that in particular would probably
> cause some kind of ABI breakage, but it still reminded me that I have an
> incomplete picture of the threat model.
Yes. The main reason for not adding it now is the ABI breakage.
As a next step, we could potentially develop mseal(), which fits more
to the code segment.
The PKEY_ENFORCE_API allows munmap(), so the user case is slightly different.

I will leave the threat model / V8 specific question to Stephan.