[PATCH] signal: SIGKILL can cause signal effects to appear at PTRACE_EVENT_EXIT without tracer notification

Kyle Huey
2021-11-01T03:42:50Z

rr, a userspace record and replay debugger[0], uses the recorded register
state at PTRACE_EVENT_EXIT to find the point in time at which to cease
executing the program during replay.

If a SIGKILL races with processing another signal in get_signal, it is
possible for the kernel to decline to notify the tracer of the original
signal. But if the original signal had a handler, the kernel proceeds
with setting up a signal handler frame as if the tracer had chosen to
deliver the signal unmodified to the tracee. When the kernel goes to
execute the signal handler that it has now modified the stack and registers
for, it will discover the pending SIGKILL, and terminate the tracee
without executing the handler. When PTRACE_EVENT_EXIT is delivered to
the tracer, however, the effects of handler setup will be visible to
the tracer.

Because rr (the tracer) was never notified of the signal, it is not aware
that a signal handler frame was set up and expects the state of the program
at PTRACE_EVENT_EXIT to be a state that will be reconstructed naturally
by allowing the program to execute from the last event. When that fails
to happen during replay, rr will assert and die.

The following patches add an explicit check for a newly pending SIGKILL
after the ptracer has been notified and the siglock has been reacquired.
If this happens, we stop processing the current signal and proceed
immediately to handling the SIGKILL. This makes the state reported at
PTRACE_EVENT_EXIT the unmodified state of the program, and also avoids the
work to set up a signal handler frame that will never be used.

This issue was originally reported by the credited rr user.

[0] https://rr-project.org/