linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 26/26] x86, pkeys: Documentation

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Date:	Fri, 2 Oct 2015 10:50:36 -0700
From:	Dave Hansen <dave@...1.net>
To:	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>,
	Andy Lutomirski <luto@...capital.net>
Cc:	Kees Cook <keescook@...gle.com>, "x86@...nel.org" <x86@...nel.org>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Linux-MM <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@...llo.nl>,
	Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>,
	Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 26/26] x86, pkeys: Documentation

On 10/01/2015 11:23 PM, Ingo Molnar wrote:
>> > Also, how do we do mprotect_pkey and say "don't change the key"?
> So if we start managing keys as a resource (i.e. alloc/free up to 16 of them), and 
> provide APIs for user-space to do all that, then user-space is not supposed to 
> touch keys it has not allocated for itself - just like it's not supposed to write 
> to fds it has not opened.

I like that.  It gives us at least a "soft" indicator to userspace about
what keys it should or shouldn't be using.

> Such an allocation method can still 'mess up', and if the kernel allocates a key 
> for its purposes it should not assume that user-space cannot change it, but at 
> least for non-buggy code there's no interaction and it would work out fine.

Yeah.  It also provides a clean interface so that future hardware could
enforce enforce kernel "ownership" of a key which could protect against
even buggy code.

So, we add a pair of syscalls,

	unsigned long sys_alloc_pkey(unsigned long flags??)
	unsigned long sys_free_pkey(unsigned long pkey)

keep the metadata in the mm, and then make sure that userspace allocated
it before it is allowed to do an mprotect_pkey() with it.

mprotect_pkey(add, flags, pkey)
{
	if (!(mm->pkeys_allocated & (1 << pkey))
		return -EINVAL;
}

That should be pretty easy to implement.  The only real overhead is the
16 bits we need to keep in the mm somewhere.
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