[PATCH v22 0/8] fork: Support shadow stacks in clone3()

Mark Brown
2025-10-15T12:58:20Z

At this point I think everyone in the on the kernel side is happy with
this but there were some questions from the glibc side about the value
of controlling the shadow stack placement and size, especially with the
current inability to reuse the shadow stack for an exited thread. With
support for reuse it would be possible to have a cache of shadow stacks
as is currently supported for the normal stack.

Since the discussion petered out I'm resending this in order to give
people something work with while prototyping. It should be possible to
prototype any potential kernel features to help build out shadow stack
support in userspace by enabling shadow stack writes, as suggested by
Rick Edgecombe this may end up being required anyway for supporting more
exotic scenarios. On all current architectures with the feature writes
to shadow stack require specific instructions so there are still
security benefits even with writes enabled.

I did send a change implementing a feature writing a token on thread
exit to allow reuse:

https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250921-arm64-gcs-exit-token-v1-0-45cf64e648d5@kernel.org

but wasn't planning to refresh it without some indication from the
userspace side that that'd be useful.

Non-process cover letter:

The kernel has added support for shadow stacks, currently x86 only using
their CET feature but both arm64 and RISC-V have equivalent features
(GCS and Zicfiss respectively), I am actively working on GCS[1]. With
shadow stacks the hardware maintains an additional stack containing only
the return addresses for branch instructions which is not generally
writeable by userspace and ensures that any returns are to the recorded
addresses. This provides some protection against ROP attacks and making
it easier to collect call stacks. These shadow stacks are allocated in
the address space of the userspace process.

Our API for shadow stacks does not currently offer userspace any
flexiblity for managing the allocation of shadow stacks for newly
created threads, instead the kernel allocates a new shadow stack with
the same size as the normal stack whenever a thread is created with the
feature enabled. The stacks allocated in this way are freed by the
kernel when the thread exits or shadow stacks are disabled for the
thread. This lack of flexibility and control isn't ideal, in the vast
majority of cases the shadow stack will be over allocated and the
implicit allocation and deallocation is not consistent with other
interfaces. As far as I can tell the interface is done in this manner
mainly because the shadow stack patches were in development since before
clone3() was implemented.

Since clone3() is readily extensible let's add support for specifying a
shadow stack when creating a new thread or process, keeping the current
implicit allocation behaviour if one is not specified either with
clone3() or through the use of clone(). The user must provide a shadow
stack pointer, this must point to memory mapped for use as a shadow
stackby map_shadow_stack() with an architecture specified shadow stack
token at the top of the stack.

Yuri Khrustalev has raised questions from the libc side regarding
discoverability of extended clone3() structure sizes[2], this seems like
a general issue with clone3(). There was a suggestion to add a hwcap on
arm64 which isn't ideal but is doable there, though architecture
specific mechanisms would also be needed for x86 (and RISC-V if it's
support gets merged before this does). The idea has, however, had
strong pushback from the architecture maintainers and it is possible to
detect support for this in clone3() by attempting a call with a
misaligned shadow stack pointer specified so no hwcap has been added.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-arm-kernel/20241001-arm64-gcs-v13-0-222b78d87eee@kernel.org/T/#mc58f97f27461749ccf400ebabf6f9f937116a86b
[2] https://lore.kernel.org/r/aCs65ccRQtJBnZ_5@arm.com

Signed-off-by: Mark Brown <broonie@kernel.org>
---
Changes in v22:
- Rebase onto v6.18-rc1.
- Cover letter updates.
- Link to v21: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250916-clone3-shadow-stack-v21-0-910493527013@kernel.org

Changes in v21:
- Rebase onto https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/vfs/vfs.git kernel-6.18.clone3
- Rename shadow_stack_token to shstk_token, since it's a simple rename I've
kept the acks and reviews but I dropped the tested-bys just to be safe.
- Link to v20: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250902-clone3-shadow-stack-v20-0-4d9fff1c53e7@kernel.org

Changes in v20:
- Comment fixes and clarifications in x86 arch_shstk_validate_clone()
from Rick Edgecombe.
- Spelling fix in documentation.
- Link to v19: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250819-clone3-shadow-stack-v19-0-bc957075479b@kernel.org

Changes in v19:
- Rebase onto v6.17-rc1.
- Link to v18: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250702-clone3-shadow-stack-v18-0-7965d2b694db@kernel.org

Changes in v18:
- Rebase onto v6.16-rc3.
- Thanks to pointers from Yuri Khrustalev this version has been tested
on x86 so I have removed the RFT tag.
- Clarify clone3_shadow_stack_valid() comment about the Kconfig check.
- Remove redundant GCSB DSYNCs in arm64 code.
- Fix token validation on x86.
- Link to v17: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250609-clone3-shadow-stack-v17-0-8840ed97ff6f@kernel.org

Changes in v17:
- Rebase onto v6.16-rc1.
- Link to v16: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250416-clone3-shadow-stack-v16-0-2ffc9ca3917b@kernel.org

Changes in v16:
- Rebase onto v6.15-rc2.
- Roll in fixes from x86 testing from Rick Edgecombe.
- Rework so that the argument is shadow_stack_token.
- Link to v15: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250408-clone3-shadow-stack-v15-0-3fa245c6e3be@kernel.org

Changes in v15:
- Rebase onto v6.15-rc1.
- Link to v14: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250206-clone3-shadow-stack-v14-0-805b53af73b9@kernel.org

Changes in v14:
- Rebase onto v6.14-rc1.
- Link to v13: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20241203-clone3-shadow-stack-v13-0-93b89a81a5ed@kernel.org

Changes in v13:
- Rebase onto v6.13-rc1.
- Link to v12: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20241031-clone3-shadow-stack-v12-0-7183eb8bee17@kernel.org

Changes in v12:
- Add the regular prctl() to the userspace API document since arm64
support is queued in -next.
- Link to v11: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20241005-clone3-shadow-stack-v11-0-2a6a2bd6d651@kernel.org

Changes in v11:
- Rebase onto arm64 for-next/gcs, which is based on v6.12-rc1, and
integrate arm64 support.
- Rework the interface to specify a shadow stack pointer rather than a
base and size like we do for the regular stack.
- Link to v10: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20240821-clone3-shadow-stack-v10-0-06e8797b9445@kernel.org

Changes in v10:
- Integrate fixes & improvements for the x86 implementation from Rick
Edgecombe.
- Require that the shadow stack be VM_WRITE.
- Require that the shadow stack base and size be sizeof(void *) aligned.
- Clean up trailing newline.
- Link to v9: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20240819-clone3-shadow-stack-v9-0-962d74f99464@kernel.org

Changes in v9:
- Pull token validation earlier and report problems with an error return
to parent rather than signal delivery to the child.
- Verify that the top of the supplied shadow stack is VM_SHADOW_STACK.
- Rework token validation to only do the page mapping once.
- Drop no longer needed support for testing for signals in selftest.
- Fix typo in comments.
- Link to v8: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20240808-clone3-shadow-stack-v8-0-0acf37caf14c@kernel.org

Changes in v8:
- Fix token verification with user specified shadow stack.
- Don't track user managed shadow stacks for child processes.
- Link to v7: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20240731-clone3-shadow-stack-v7-0-a9532eebfb1d@kernel.org

Changes in v7:
- Rebase onto v6.11-rc1.
- Typo fixes.
- Link to v6: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20240623-clone3-shadow-stack-v6-0-9ee7783b1fb9@kernel.org

Changes in v6:
- Rebase onto v6.10-rc3.
- Ensure we don't try to free the parent shadow stack in error paths of
x86 arch code.
- Spelling fixes in userspace API document.
- Additional cleanups and improvements to the clone3() tests to support
the shadow stack tests.
- Link to v5: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20240203-clone3-shadow-stack-v5-0-322c69598e4b@kernel.org

Changes in v5:
- Rebase onto v6.8-rc2.
- Rework ABI to have the user allocate the shadow stack memory with
map_shadow_stack() and a token.
- Force inlining of the x86 shadow stack enablement.
- Move shadow stack enablement out into a shared header for reuse by
other tests.
- Link to v4: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20231128-clone3-shadow-stack-v4-0-8b28ffe4f676@kernel.org

Changes in v4:
- Formatting changes.
- Use a define for minimum shadow stack size and move some basic
validation to fork.c.
- Link to v3: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20231120-clone3-shadow-stack-v3-0-a7b8ed3e2acc@kernel.org

Changes in v3:
- Rebase onto v6.7-rc2.
- Remove stale shadow_stack in internal kargs.
- If a shadow stack is specified unconditionally use it regardless of
CLONE_ parameters.
- Force enable shadow stacks in the selftest.
- Update changelogs for RISC-V feature rename.
- Link to v2: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20231114-clone3-shadow-stack-v2-0-b613f8681155@kernel.org

Changes in v2:
- Rebase onto v6.7-rc1.
- Remove ability to provide preallocated shadow stack, just specify the
desired size.
- Link to v1: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20231023-clone3-shadow-stack-v1-0-d867d0b5d4d0@kernel.org

---
Mark Brown (8):
arm64/gcs: Return a success value from gcs_alloc_thread_stack()
Documentation: userspace-api: Add shadow stack API documentation
selftests: Provide helper header for shadow stack testing
fork: Add shadow stack support to clone3()
selftests/clone3: Remove redundant flushes of output streams
selftests/clone3: Factor more of main loop into test_clone3()
selftests/clone3: Allow tests to flag if -E2BIG is a valid error code
selftests/clone3: Test shadow stack support

Documentation/userspace-api/index.rst | 1 +
Documentation/userspace-api/shadow_stack.rst | 44 +++++
arch/arm64/include/asm/gcs.h | 8 +-
arch/arm64/kernel/process.c | 8 +-
arch/arm64/mm/gcs.c | 55 +++++-
arch/x86/include/asm/shstk.h | 11 +-
arch/x86/kernel/process.c | 2 +-
arch/x86/kernel/shstk.c | 53 ++++-
include/asm-generic/cacheflush.h | 11 ++
include/linux/sched/task.h | 17 ++
include/uapi/linux/sched.h | 9 +-
kernel/fork.c | 93 +++++++--
tools/testing/selftests/clone3/clone3.c | 226 ++++++++++++++++++----
tools/testing/selftests/clone3/clone3_selftests.h | 65 ++++++-
tools/testing/selftests/ksft_shstk.h | 98 ++++++++++
15 files changed, 620 insertions(+), 81 deletions(-)
---
base-commit: 3a8660878839faadb4f1a6dd72c3179c1df56787
change-id: 20231019-clone3-shadow-stack-15d40d2bf536

Best regards,
--
Mark Brown <broonie@kernel.org>