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Message-ID: <CAMFK0gsVHW0OK-Ze9V5c0pEdEb4upKAnXf1+9kvDTgYtuoWT4Q@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 28 Mar 2015 10:28:09 +0100
From: Olivier Galibert <galibert@...ox.com>
To: Denys Vlasenko <vda.linux@...glemail.com>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
Denys Vlasenko <dvlasenk@...hat.com>,
Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>,
Andy Lutomirski <luto@...capital.net>,
Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>, X86 ML <x86@...nel.org>,
LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: ia32_sysenter_target does not preserve EFLAGS
Hi,
Beware that could be opening the door to information leaks for a very
small gain (most syscalls are not getuid).
Best,
OG.
On Sat, Mar 28, 2015 at 1:34 AM, Denys Vlasenko
<vda.linux@...glemail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 27, 2015 at 9:00 PM, Linus Torvalds
> <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org> wrote:
>> On Fri, Mar 27, 2015 at 7:25 AM, Denys Vlasenko <dvlasenk@...hat.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Apparently, users *don't* depend on arithmetic flags
>>> to survive over syscall. They also okay with DF flag
>>> being cleared.
>>
>> Generally, users probably dont' care about many registers at all being
>> saved, but it's worth noting that the reason system calls save/restore
>> even caller-saved registers is at least partly in order to avoid any
>> kernel information leaks.
>>
>> I don't believe that user mode will ever reasonably care about the
>> arithmetic flags being changed, but at the same time I also don't it
>> is something we should ever consider a "feature" we should try to take
>> advantage of. Generally we should try to not mess with the flag state,
>> and I'd *much* rather make the rule be that all the system call return
>> paths restore flags as much as possible.
>
> "We don't clobber anything" ABI has its appeal.
> OTOH, fulfilling ABI's promises has cost which hast to be paid
> on every syscall, regardless whether userspace needed it or not.
>
> Example. This is the uclibc implementation of write():
>
> 00000000004acfc4 <__libc_write>:
> 4acfc4: 53 push %rbx
> 4acfc5: 48 63 ff movslq %edi,%rdi
> 4acfc8: b8 01 00 00 00 mov $0x1,%eax
> 4acfcd: 0f 05 syscall
> 4acfcf: 48 89 c3 mov %rax,%rbx
> 4acfd2: 48 81 fb 00 f0 ff ff cmp $0xfffffffffffff000,%rbx
> 4acfd9: 76 0f jbe 4acfea <__libc_write+0x26>
> 4acfdb: e8 64 15 00 00 callq 4ae544 <__GI___errno_location>
> 4acfe0: 89 da mov %ebx,%edx
> 4acfe2: f7 da neg %edx
> 4acfe4: 89 10 mov %edx,(%rax)
> 4acfe6: 48 83 c8 ff or $0xffffffffffffffff,%rax
> 4acfea: 5b pop %rbx
> 4acfeb: c3 retq
>
> This is a C function. Therefore any its caller assumes that C-clobbered
> registers can be, indeed, clobbered here, so if that caller uses any
> of them, it saves/restores them.
>
> All efforts by kernel code to save/restore C-clobbered registers,
> eight of them, are in vain. It's just useless work. Userspace
> does not benefit from that effort.
>
> If our syscall ABI would say that those regs are not preserved,
> we could have a bit faster syscalls. Any userspace code which
> really had to have those registers preserved across a particular
> syscall, could push/pop them itself.
> --
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