Re: [PATCH v2 15/39] x86/mm: Check Shadow Stack page fault errors

Kees Cook
2022-10-03T18:20:45Z

On Thu, Sep 29, 2022 at 03:29:12PM -0700, Rick Edgecombe wrote:
> From: Yu-cheng Yu <yu-cheng.yu@intel.com>
>
> The CPU performs "shadow stack accesses" when it expects to encounter
> shadow stack mappings. These accesses can be implicit (via CALL/RET
> instructions) or explicit (instructions like WRSS).
>
> Shadow stacks accesses to shadow-stack mappings can see faults in normal,
> valid operation just like regular accesses to regular mappings. Shadow
> stacks need some of the same features like delayed allocation, swap and
> copy-on-write. The kernel needs to use faults to implement those features.
>
> The architecture has concepts of both shadow stack reads and shadow stack
> writes. Any shadow stack access to non-shadow stack memory will generate
> a fault with the shadow stack error code bit set.
>
> This means that, unlike normal write protection, the fault handler needs
> to create a type of memory that can be written to (with instructions that
> generate shadow stack writes), even to fulfill a read access. So in the
> case of COW memory, the COW needs to take place even with a shadow stack
> read. Otherwise the page will be left (shadow stack) writable in
> userspace. So to trigger the appropriate behavior, set FAULT_FLAG_WRITE
> for shadow stack accesses, even if the access was a shadow stack read.
>
> Shadow stack accesses can also result in errors, such as when a shadow
> stack overflows, or if a shadow stack access occurs to a non-shadow-stack
> mapping. Also, generate the errors for invalid shadow stack accesses.
>
> Signed-off-by: Yu-cheng Yu <yu-cheng.yu@intel.com>

Reviewed-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>

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Kees Cook