linux-hardening - Re: [RFC PATCH v3 11/11] mseal:add documentation

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Message-ID: <CALmYWFu39nzHvBmRsA326GcmV9u=eM-2aCGOvLK31rrb2R9NEw@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2023 16:35:26 -0800
From: Jeff Xu <jeffxu@...gle.com>
To: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc: jeffxu@...omium.org, akpm@...ux-foundation.org, keescook@...omium.org, 
	jannh@...gle.com, sroettger@...gle.com, willy@...radead.org, 
	gregkh@...uxfoundation.org, jorgelo@...omium.org, groeck@...omium.org, 
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-kselftest@...r.kernel.org, 
	linux-mm@...ck.org, pedro.falcato@...il.com, dave.hansen@...el.com, 
	linux-hardening@...r.kernel.org, deraadt@...nbsd.org
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH v3 11/11] mseal:add documentation

On Tue, Dec 12, 2023 at 4:39 PM Linus Torvalds
<torvalds@...ux-foundation.org> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 12 Dec 2023 at 15:17, <jeffxu@...omium.org> wrote:
> > +
> > +**types**: bit mask to specify the sealing types, they are:
>
> I really want a real-life use-case for more than one bit of "don't modify".
>
For the real-life use case question, Stephen Röttger and I put
description in the cover letter as well as the open discussion section
(mseal() vs immutable()) of patch 0/11.  Perhaps you are looking for more
details in chrome usage of the API, e.g. code-wise ?

> IOW, when would you *ever* say "seal this area, but MADV_DONTNEED is ok"?
>
The MADV_DONTNEED is OK for file-backed mapping.
As state in man page of madvise: [1]

"subsequent accesses of pages in the range will succeed,  but will
result in either repopulating the memory contents from the up-to-date
contents of the underlying mapped file"

> Or when would you *ever* say "seal this area, but mprotect()" is ok.
>
The fact  that openBSD allows RW=>RO transaction, as in its man page [2]

 "  At present, mprotect(2) may reduce permissions on immutable pages
  marked PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE to the less permissive PROT_READ."

suggests application might desire multiple ways to seal the "PROT" bits.

E.g.
Applications that wants a full lockdown of PROT and PKEY might use
SEAL_PROT_PKEY (Chrome case and implemented in this patch)

Application that desires RW=>RO transaction, might implement
SEAL_PROT_DOWNGRADEABLE, or specifically allow RW=>RO.
(not implemented but can be added in future as extension if  needed.)

> IOW, I want to know why we don't just do the BSD immutable thing, and
> why we need this multi-level sealing thing.
>
The details are discussed in mseal() vs immutable()) of the cover letter
(patch 0/11)

In short, BSD's immutable is designed specific for libc case, and Chrome
case is just different (e.g. the lifetime of those mappings and requirement of
free/discard unused memory).

Single bit vs multi-bits are still up for discussion.
If there are strong opinions on the multiple-bits approach, (and
no objection on applying MM_SEAL_DISCARD_RO_ANON to the .text part
during libc dynamic loading, which has no effect anyway because it is
file backed.), we could combine all three bits into one. A side note is that we
could not add something such as SEAL_PROT_DOWNGRADEABLE later,
since pkey_mprotect is sealed.

I'm open to one bit approach. If we took that approach,
We might consider the following:

mseal() or
mseal(flags), flags are reserved for future use.

I appreciate a direction on this.

 [1] https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/madvise.2.html
 [2] https://man.openbsd.org/mimmutable.2

-Jeff

>                Linus