[PATCH] mm/secretmem: use refcount_t instead of atomic_t

Jordy Zomer
2021-08-20T04:34:37Z

When a secret memory region is active, memfd_secret disables
hibernation. One of the goals is to keep the secret data from being
written to persistent-storage.

It accomplishes this by maintaining a reference count to
`secretmem_users`. Once this reference is held your system can not be
hibernated due to the check in `hibernation_available()`. However,
because `secretmem_users` is of type `atomic_t`, reference counter
overflows are possible.

As you can see there's an `atomic_inc` for each `memfd` that is opened
in the `memfd_secret` syscall. If a local attacker succeeds to open 2^32
memfd's, the counter will wrap around to 0. This implies that you may
hibernate again, even though there are still regions of this secret
memory, thereby bypassing the security check.

In an attempt to fix this I have used `refcount_t` instead of `atomic_t`
which prevents reference counter overflows.

Signed-off-by: Jordy Zomer <jordy@pwning.systems>
---
mm/secretmem.c | 9 +++++----
1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/mm/secretmem.c b/mm/secretmem.c
index 030f02ddc7c1..1fea68b8d5a6 100644
--- a/mm/secretmem.c
+++ b/mm/secretmem.c
@@ -18,6 +18,7 @@
#include <linux/secretmem.h>
#include <linux/set_memory.h>
#include <linux/sched/signal.h>
+#include <linux/refcount.h>

#include <uapi/linux/magic.h>

@@ -40,11 +41,11 @@ module_param_named(enable, secretmem_enable, bool, 0400);
MODULE_PARM_DESC(secretmem_enable,
"Enable secretmem and memfd_secret(2) system call");

-static atomic_t secretmem_users;
+static refcount_t secretmem_users;

bool secretmem_active(void)
{
- return !!atomic_read(&secretmem_users);
+ return !!refcount_read(&secretmem_users);
}

static vm_fault_t secretmem_fault(struct vm_fault *vmf)
@@ -103,7 +104,7 @@ static const struct vm_operations_struct secretmem_vm_ops = {

static int secretmem_release(struct inode *inode, struct file *file)
{
- atomic_dec(&secretmem_users);
+ refcount_dec(&secretmem_users);
return 0;
}

@@ -217,7 +218,7 @@ SYSCALL_DEFINE1(memfd_secret, unsigned int, flags)
file->f_flags |= O_LARGEFILE;

fd_install(fd, file);
- atomic_inc(&secretmem_users);
+ refcount_inc(&secretmem_users);
return fd;

err_put_fd:
--
2.27.0