linux-kernel - Re: TLB flushes on fixmap changes

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Date:   Sun, 26 Aug 2018 09:47:36 -0700
From:   Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>
To:     Andy Lutomirski <luto@...capital.net>
Cc:     Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>,
        Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat@...nel.org>,
        Nadav Amit <nadav.amit@...il.com>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@...hat.com>,
        Jiri Kosina <jkosina@...e.cz>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
        Will Deacon <will.deacon@....com>,
        Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@....ibm.com>,
        Nick Piggin <npiggin@...il.com>,
        "the arch/x86 maintainers" <x86@...nel.org>,
        Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>,
        Rik van Riel <riel@...riel.com>,
        Jann Horn <jannh@...gle.com>,
        Adin Scannell <ascannell@...gle.com>,
        Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...el.com>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        linux-mm <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
        David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>,
        Martin Schwidefsky <schwidefsky@...ibm.com>,
        Michael Ellerman <mpe@...erman.id.au>
Subject: Re: TLB flushes on fixmap changes

On Sun, Aug 26, 2018 at 7:20 AM, Andy Lutomirski <luto@...capital.net> wrote:
>
>
>> On Aug 25, 2018, at 9:43 PM, Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sat, Aug 25, 2018 at 9:21 PM, Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org> wrote:
>>>> On Sat, Aug 25, 2018 at 7:23 PM, Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat@...nel.org> wrote:
>>>> On Fri, 24 Aug 2018 21:23:26 -0700
>>>> Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org> wrote:
>>>>> Couldn't text_poke() use kmap_atomic()?  Or, even better, just change CR3?
>>>>
>>>> No, since kmap_atomic() is only for x86_32 and highmem support kernel.
>>>> In x86-64, it seems that returns just a page address. That is not
>>>> good for text_poke, since it needs to make a writable alias for RO
>>>> code page. Hmm, maybe, can we mimic copy_oldmem_page(), it uses ioremap_cache?
>>>>
>>>
>>> I just re-read text_poke().  It's, um, horrible.  Not only is the
>>> implementation overcomplicated and probably buggy, but it's SLOOOOOW.
>>> It's totally the wrong API -- poking one instruction at a time
>>> basically can't be efficient on x86.  The API should either poke lots
>>> of instructions at once or should be text_poke_begin(); ...;
>>> text_poke_end();.
>>>
>>> Anyway, the attached patch seems to boot.  Linus, Kees, etc: is this
>>> too scary of an approach?  With the patch applied, text_poke() is a
>>> fantastic exploit target.  On the other hand, even without the patch
>>> applied, text_poke() is every bit as juicy.
>>
>> I tried to convince Ingo to use this method for doing "write rarely"
>> and he soundly rejected it. :) I've always liked this because AFAICT,
>> it's local to the CPU. I had proposed it in
>> https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/kees/linux.git/commit/?h=kspp/write-rarely&id=9ab0cb2618ebbc51f830ceaa06b7d2182fe1a52d
>
> Ingo, can you clarify why you hate it?  I personally would rather use CR3, but CR0 seems like a fine first step, at least for text_poke.

Sorry, it looks like it was tglx, not Ingo:

https://lkml.kernel.org/r/alpine.DEB.2.20.1704071048360.1716@nanos

This thread is long, and one thing that I think went unanswered was
"why do we want this to be fast?" the answer is: for doing page table
updates. Page tables are becoming a bigger target for attacks now, and
it's be nice if they could stay read-only unless they're getting
updated (with something like this).

-Kees

-- 
Kees Cook
Pixel Security