Re: [RFC PATCH 00/21] KCFI support

Peter Zijlstra
2022-04-30T09:02:24Z

On Fri, Apr 29, 2022 at 03:53:12PM -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 29, 2022 at 01:36:23PM -0700, Sami Tolvanen wrote:
> > KCFI is a proposed forward-edge control-flow integrity scheme for
> > Clang, which is more suitable for kernel use than the existing CFI
> > scheme used by CONFIG_CFI_CLANG. KCFI doesn't require LTO, doesn't
> > alter function references to point to a jump table, and won't break
> > function address equality.
>
> 🎉 :)
>
> > The latest LLVM patches are here:
> >
> > https://reviews.llvm.org/D119296
> > https://reviews.llvm.org/D124211
> >
> > [...]
> > To test this series, you'll need to compile your own Clang toolchain
> > with the patches linked above. You can also find the complete source
> > tree here:
> >
> > https://github.com/samitolvanen/llvm-project/commits/kcfi-rfc
>
> And note that this RFC is seeking to break a bit of a circular dependency
> with regard to the design of __builtin_kcfi_call_unchecked (D124211
> above), as the implementation has gone around a few times in review within
> LLVM, and we want to make sure that kernel folks are okay with what was
> settled on. If there are no objections on the kernel side, then we can
> land the KCFI patches, as this is basically the only remaining blocker.

So aside from the static_call usage, was there any other?

Anyway, I think I hate that __builtin, I'd *much* rather see a variable
attribute or qualifier for this, such that one can mark a function
pointer as not doing CFI.

I simply doesn't make sense to have a builtin that operates on an
expression. The whole thing is about indirect calls, IOW function
pointers.