linux-hardening - Re: [PATCH 1/6] PKEY: Introduce PKEY_ENFORCE

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Date:   Wed, 17 May 2023 13:07:02 +0200
From:   Stephen Röttger <sroettger@...gle.com>
To:     Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...el.com>
Cc:     jeffxu@...omium.org, luto@...nel.org, jorgelo@...omium.org,
        keescook@...omium.org, groeck@...omium.org, jannh@...gle.com,
        akpm@...ux-foundation.org, jeffxu@...gle.com,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-kselftest@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-mm@...ck.org, linux-hardening@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/6] PKEY: Introduce PKEY_ENFORCE_API flag

On Wed, May 17, 2023 at 1:14 AM Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...el.com> wrote:
>
> On 5/15/23 06:05, jeffxu@...omium.org wrote:
> > --- a/arch/x86/mm/pkeys.c
> > +++ b/arch/x86/mm/pkeys.c
> > @@ -20,7 +20,7 @@ int __execute_only_pkey(struct mm_struct *mm)
> >       /* Do we need to assign a pkey for mm's execute-only maps? */
> >       if (execute_only_pkey == -1) {
> >               /* Go allocate one to use, which might fail */
> > -             execute_only_pkey = mm_pkey_alloc(mm);
> > +             execute_only_pkey = mm_pkey_alloc(mm, 0);
> >               if (execute_only_pkey < 0)
> >                       return -1;
> >               need_to_set_mm_pkey = true;
>
> In your threat model, what mechanism prevents the attacker from
> modifying executable mappings?

There are different options how we can address this:
1) having a generic mseal() API as Jeff mentioned
2) tagging all code pages with the pkey we're using
    (would this affect memory sharing between processes?)
3) prevent this with seccomp + userspace validation
If we have pkey support, we will only create executable memory using
pkey_mprotect and everything else can be blocked with seccomp. This would still
allow turning R-X memory into RW- memory, but you can't change it back without
going through our codepath that has added validation.

There's a similar challenge with making RO memory writable. For this we'll need
to use approach 1) or 2) instead.

> I was trying to figure out if the implicit execute-only pkey should have
> the PKEY_ENFORCE_API bit set.  I think that in particular would probably
> cause some kind of ABI breakage, but it still reminded me that I have an
> incomplete picture of the threat model.

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