Re: [PATCH RFT v8 4/9] fork: Add shadow stack support to clone3()

[Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>]

On Fri, Aug 16, 2024 at 02:52:28PM +0000, Edgecombe, Rick P wrote:
> On Fri, 2024-08-16 at 09:44 +0100, Catalin Marinas wrote:
> > > After a token is consumed normally, it doesn't set it to zero. Instead it
> > > sets it to a "previous-ssp token". I don't think we actually want to do that here
> > > though because it involves the old SSP, which doesn't really apply in this
> > > case. I don't see any problem with zero, but was there any special thinking behind
> > > it?
> > 
> > BTW, since it's the parent setting up the shadow stack in its own
> > address space before forking, I think at least the read can avoid
> > access_remote_vm() and we could do it earlier, even before the new
> > process is created.
> 
> Hmm. Makes sense. It's a bit racy since the parent could consume that token from
> another thread, but it would be a race in any case.

More on the race below. If we handle it properly, we don't need the
separate checks.

> > > > +       if (access_remote_vm(mm, addr, &val, sizeof(val),
> > > > +                            FOLL_FORCE | FOLL_WRITE) != sizeof(val))
> > > > +               goto out;
> > > 
> > > The GUPs still seem a bit unfortunate for a couple reasons:
> > >   - We could do a CMPXCHG version and are just not (I see ARM has identical
> > > code in gcs_consume_token()). It's not the only race like this though FWIW.
> > >   - I *think* this is the only unprivileged FOLL_FORCE that can write to the
> > > current process in the kernel. As is, it could be used on normal RO
> > > mappings, at
> > > least in a limited way. Maybe another point for the VMA check. We'd want to
> > > check that it is normal shadow stack?
> > >   - Lingering doubts about the wisdom of doing GUPs during task creation.
> > 
> > I don't like the access_remote_vm() either. In the common (practically
> > only) case with CLONE_VM, the mm is actually current->mm, so no need for
> > a GUP.
> 
> On the x86 side, we don't have a shadow stack access CMPXCHG. We will have to
> GUP and do a normal CMPXCHG off of the direct map to handle it fully properly in
> any case (CLONE_VM or not).

I guess we could do the same here and for the arm64 gcs_consume_token().
Basically get_user_page_vma_remote() gives us the page together with the
vma that you mentioned needs checking. We can then do a cmpxchg directly
on the page_address(). It's probably faster anyway than doing GUP twice.

-- 
Catalin