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Message-ID: <20151106074424.GA17053@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2015 08:44:24 +0100
From: Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>
To: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
Stephen Smalley <sds@...ho.nsa.gov>,
Matt Fleming <matt@...eblueprint.co.uk>
Cc: Dave Jones <davej@...emonkey.org.uk>,
Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>, Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>,
Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>,
Denys Vlasenko <dvlasenk@...hat.com>,
Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>
Subject: Re: [GIT PULL] x86/mm changes for v4.4
(resent with Matt's email address fixed.)
* Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org> wrote:
>
> * Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org> wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 6:17 PM, Dave Jones <davej@...emonkey.org.uk> wrote:
> > > On Wed, Nov 04, 2015 at 05:31:59PM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > > >
> > > > I don't have that later debug output at all. Presumably some config difference.
> > >
> > > CONFIG_X86_PTDUMP_CORE iirc.
> >
> > No, I have that. I suspect CONFIG_EFI_PGT_DUMP instead.
> >
> > Anyway, as it stands now, I think the CONFIG_DEBUG_WX option should
> > not default to 'y' unless it is made more useful if it actually
> > triggers. Ingo?
>
> Yeah, agreed absolutely.
>
> So this is a bit sad because RWX pages are a real problem in practice, especially
> since the EFI addresses are well predictable, but generating a warning without
> being able to fix it quickly is counterproductive as well, as it only annoys
> people and makes them turn off the option. (Which we could do as well to begin
> with, without the annoyance factor...)
>
> So the plan would be:
>
> 1) Make it default-n.
>
> 2) We should try to further improve the messages to make it easier to determine
> what's wrong. We _do_ try to output symbolic information in the warning, to
> make it easier to find buggy mappings, but these are not standard kernel
> mappings. So I think we need an e820 mappings based semi-symbolic printout of
> bad addresses - maybe even correlate it with the MMIO resource tree.
>
> 3) We should fix the EFI permission problem without relying on the firmware: it
> appears we could just mark everything R-X optimistically, and if a write fault
> happens (it's pretty rare in fact, only triggers when we write to an EFI
> variable and so), we can mark the faulting page RW- on the fly, because it
> appears that writable EFI sections, while not enumerated very well in 'old'
> firmware, are still supposed to be page granular. (Even 'new' firmware I
> wouldn't automatically trust to get the enumeration right...)
>
> If that 'supposed to be' turns out to be 'not true' (not unheard of in
> firmware land), then plan B would be to mark pages that generate write faults
> RWX as well, to not break functionality. (This 'mark it RWX' is not something
> that exploits would have easy access to, and we could also generate a warning
> [after the EFI call has finished] if it ever triggers.)
>
> Admittedly this approach might not be without its own complications, but it
> looks reasonably simple (I don't think we need per EFI call page tables,
> etc.), and does not assume much about the firmware being able to enumerate its
> permissions properly. Were we to merge EFI support today I'd have insisted on
> trying such an approach from day 1 on.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ingo
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