linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v4 00/17] khwasan: kernel hardware assisted address sanitizer

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Date:   Fri, 29 Jun 2018 12:07:10 +0100
From:   Will Deacon <will.deacon@....com>
To:     Andrey Konovalov <andreyknvl@...gle.com>
Cc:     Dave Martin <Dave.Martin@....com>,
        Andrey Ryabinin <aryabinin@...tuozzo.com>,
        Alexander Potapenko <glider@...gle.com>,
        Dmitry Vyukov <dvyukov@...gle.com>,
        Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com>,
        Christoph Lameter <cl@...ux.com>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@....com>,
        Nick Desaulniers <ndesaulniers@...gle.com>,
        Marc Zyngier <marc.zyngier@....com>,
        Ard Biesheuvel <ard.biesheuvel@...aro.org>,
        "Eric W . Biederman" <ebiederm@...ssion.com>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>,
        Paul Lawrence <paullawrence@...gle.com>,
        Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@...ux-m68k.org>,
        Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>,
        "Kirill A . Shutemov" <kirill.shutemov@...ux.intel.com>,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        Kate Stewart <kstewart@...uxfoundation.org>,
        Mike Rapoport <rppt@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
        kasan-dev <kasan-dev@...glegroups.com>,
        linux-doc@...r.kernel.org, LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Linux ARM <linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org>,
        linux-sparse@...r.kernel.org,
        Linux Memory Management List <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
        Linux Kbuild mailing list <linux-kbuild@...r.kernel.org>,
        Chintan Pandya <cpandya@...eaurora.org>,
        Jacob Bramley <Jacob.Bramley@....com>,
        Jann Horn <jannh@...gle.com>,
        Ruben Ayrapetyan <Ruben.Ayrapetyan@....com>,
        Lee Smith <Lee.Smith@....com>,
        Kostya Serebryany <kcc@...gle.com>,
        Mark Brand <markbrand@...gle.com>,
        Ramana Radhakrishnan <Ramana.Radhakrishnan@....com>,
        Evgeniy Stepanov <eugenis@...gle.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v4 00/17] khwasan: kernel hardware assisted address
 sanitizer

On Thu, Jun 28, 2018 at 08:56:41PM +0200, Andrey Konovalov wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 28, 2018 at 12:51 PM, Dave Martin <Dave.Martin@....com> wrote:
> > On Tue, Jun 26, 2018 at 03:15:10PM +0200, Andrey Konovalov wrote:
> >> 1. By using the Top Byte Ignore arm64 CPU feature, we can store pointer
> >>    tags in the top byte of each kernel pointer.
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > This is a change from the current situation, so the kernel may be
> > making implicit assumptions about the top byte of kernel addresses.
> >
> > Randomising the top bits may cause things like address conversions and
> > pointer arithmetic to break.
> >
> > For example, (q - p) will not produce the expected result if q and p
> > have different tags.
> 
> If q and p have different tags, that means they come from different
> allocations. I don't think it would make sense to calculate pointer
> difference in this case.

It might not seen sensible, but we could still be relying on this in the
kernel and so this change would introduce a regression. I think we need
a way to identify such pointer usage before these patches can seriously be
considered for mainline inclusion. For example use of '>' and '<' to
compare pointers in an rbtree could be affected by the introduction of
tags.

Will