netdev - Re: [RFC bpf] selftests/bpf: Curious case of a successful tailcall that returns to caller

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:   Thu, 16 Jun 2022 17:22:55 +0200
From:   Daniel Borkmann <daniel@...earbox.net>
To:     Maciej Fijalkowski <maciej.fijalkowski@...el.com>,
        Jakub Sitnicki <jakub@...udflare.com>
Cc:     bpf@...r.kernel.org, netdev@...r.kernel.org,
        Alexei Starovoitov <ast@...nel.org>,
        Andrii Nakryiko <andrii@...nel.org>, kernel-team@...udflare.com
Subject: Re: [RFC bpf] selftests/bpf: Curious case of a successful tailcall
 that returns to caller

On 6/16/22 5:00 PM, Maciej Fijalkowski wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 16, 2022 at 01:02:52PM +0200, Jakub Sitnicki wrote:
>> While working aarch64 JIT to allow mixing bpf2bpf calls with tailcalls, I
>> noticed unexpected tailcall behavior in x86 JIT.
>>
>> I don't know if it is by design or a bug. The bpf_tail_call helper
>> documentation says that the user should not expect the control flow to
>> return to the previous program, if the tail call was successful:
>>
>>> If the call succeeds, the kernel immediately runs the first
>>> instruction of the new program. This is not a function call,
>>> and it never returns to the previous program.
>>
>> However, when a tailcall happens from a subprogram, that is after a bpf2bpf
>> call, that is not the case. We return to the caller program because the
>> stack destruction is too shallow. BPF stack of just the top-most BPF
>> function gets destroyed.
>>
>> This in turn allows the return value of the tailcall'ed program to get
>> overwritten, as the test below test demonstrates. It currently fails on
>> x86:
> 
> Disclaimer: some time has passed by since I looked into this :P
> 
> To me the bug would be if test would have returned 1 in your case. If I
> recall correctly that was the design choice, so tailcalls when mixed with
> bpf2bpf will consume current stack frame. When tailcall happens from
> subprogram then we would return to the caller of this subprog. We added
> logic to verifier that checks if this (tc + bpf2bpf) mix wouldn't cause
> stack overflow. We even limit the stack frame size to 256 in such case.

Yes, that is the desired behavior, so return 2 from your example below looks
correct / expected:

+SEC("tc")
+int classifier_0(struct __sk_buff *skb __unused)
+{
+	done = 1;
+	return 0;
+}
+
+static __noinline
+int subprog_tail(struct __sk_buff *skb)
+{
+	bpf_tail_call_static(skb, &jmp_table, 0);
+	return 1;
+}
+
+SEC("tc")
+int entry(struct __sk_buff *skb)
+{
+	subprog_tail(skb);
+	return 2;
+}

> Cilium docs explain this:
> https://docs.cilium.io/en/latest/bpf/#bpf-to-bpf-calls