linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] x86: mce: fix kernel panic when check

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Date:   Fri, 23 Feb 2018 11:42:39 +0100
From:   Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>
To:     Seunghun Han <kkamagui@...il.com>, Tony Luck <tony.luck@...el.com>
Cc:     linux-edac@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] x86: mce: fix kernel panic when check_interval is changed

On Fri, Feb 23, 2018 at 07:13:50PM +0900, Seunghun Han wrote:
> I am Seunghun Han and a senior security researcher at National Security
> Research Institute of South Korea.
> 
> I found a critical security issue which can make kernel panic in userspace.
> After analyzing the issue carefully, I found that MCE driver in the kernel
> has a problem which can be occurred in SMP environment.
> 
> The check_interval file in
> /sys/devices/system/machinecheck/machinecheck<cpu number> directory is a
> global timer value for MCE polling. If it is changed by one CPU, MCE driver
> in kernel calls mce_restart() function and broadcasts the event to other

Right, so I'm thinking that doing that per-CPU configuration doesn't
make a whole lot of sense. It is not something that needs to happen very
often and it is done globally anyway.

So what we should do here, IMO, is make mce_restart() grab a mutex and
thus serialize all those sysfs writes. It will naturally also slow down
any hammering from userspace which we should not allow anyway.

Tony, what do you think?

-- 
Regards/Gruss,
    Boris.

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