Re: [RFC PATCH 0/5] madvise MADV_DOEXEC

Steven Sistare
2020-07-28T14:31:42Z

On 7/28/2020 10:23 AM, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
>> On Jul 27, 2020, at 10:02 AM, Anthony Yznaga <anthony.yznaga@oracle.com> wrote:
>>
>> ﻿This patchset adds support for preserving an anonymous memory range across
>> exec(3) using a new madvise MADV_DOEXEC argument. The primary benefit for
>> sharing memory in this manner, as opposed to re-attaching to a named shared
>> memory segment, is to ensure it is mapped at the same virtual address in
>> the new process as it was in the old one. An intended use for this is to
>> preserve guest memory for guests using vfio while qemu exec's an updated
>> version of itself. By ensuring the memory is preserved at a fixed address,
>> vfio mappings and their associated kernel data structures can remain valid.
>> In addition, for the qemu use case, qemu instances that back guest RAM with
>> anonymous memory can be updated.
>
> This will be an amazing attack surface. Perhaps use of this flag should require no_new_privs? Arguably it should also require a special flag to execve() to honor it. Otherwise library helpers that do vfork()+exec() or posix_spawn() could be quite surprised.

Preservation is disabled across fork, so fork/exec combo's are not affected. We forgot to document that.

- Steve