linux-kernel - Re: Q: perf_event && task->ptrace

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 for Android: free password hash cracker in your pocket

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

Message-ID: <20110118184234.GA1808@nowhere>
Date:	Tue, 18 Jan 2011 19:42:39 +0100
From:	Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@...il.com>
To:	Oleg Nesterov <oleg@...hat.com>
Cc:	Alan Stern <stern@...land.harvard.edu>,
	Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@...hat.com>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>, Paul Mackerras <paulus@...ba.org>,
	Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@...llo.nl>,
	Prasad <prasad@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
	Roland McGrath <roland@...hat.com>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Q: perf_event && task->ptrace_bps[]

On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 09:34:59PM +0100, Oleg Nesterov wrote:
> On 11/08, Oleg Nesterov wrote:
> >
> > I am trying to understand the usage of hw-breakpoints in arch_ptrace().
> > ptrace_set_debugreg() and related code looks obviously racy. Nothing
> > protects us against flush_ptrace_hw_breakpoint() called by the dying
> > tracee. Afaics we can leak perf_event or use the already freed memory
> > or both.
> >
> > Am I missed something?
> >
> > Looking into the git history, I don't even know which patch should be
> > blamed (if I am right), there were too many changes. I noticed that
> > 2ebd4ffb6d0cb877787b1e42be8485820158857e "perf events: Split out task
> > search into helper" moved the PF_EXITING check from find_get_context().
> > This check coould help if sys_ptrace() races with SIGKILL, but it was
> > racy anyway.
> 
> Ping.
> 
> Any idea how to fix this cleanly? May be we can reuse perf_event_mutex,
> but this looks soooo ugly. And do_exit()->flush_ptrace_hw_breakpoint()
> has the strange "FIXME:" comment which doesn't help me to understand
> what can we do.

Yeah forget about the FIXME, it's a stale thing I need to remove.

> 
> Probably the best fix is to change this code so that the tracer owns
> ->ptrace_bps[], not the tracee. But this is not trivial, and needs a
> lot of changes in ptrace code.


How much complicated would it be?

Because I see three solutions to solve this:

- Have a mutex inside thread->ptrace_bps. The contention must be
rare and only concern ptrace and tracee exit. That's the simplest.

- Have an atomic refcount inside thread->ptrace_bps so that the actual
flush can be delayed until necessary. Same as above, but exit and ptrace
can execute concurrently, code must be a bit more complicated though.

- Your solution. I'm just not sure how much change it involves. Seems
like we need to notify the parent for it to flush the breakpoints
when a task exits. Same when ptrace detaches we need to flush.

What do you guys think? At a glance it seems a mutex or a refcount
would take more memory for each thread, but I can manage to have
->ptrace_bps a block only allocated if necessary. It would be only
a pointer if no breakpoint is queued.
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/