linux-kernel - Re: [kernel-hardening] Re: [PATCH] x86/refcount: Implement fast refcount

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: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

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

Message-ID: <CAG48ez1z4F0sTBV3DCvkVJazQXxXGe=NyWKqYjKveEj-CQVy7w@mail.gmail.com>
Date:   Mon, 24 Apr 2017 10:53:30 +0200
From:   Jann Horn <jannh@...gle.com>
To:     Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>
Cc:     Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        Eric Biggers <ebiggers3@...il.com>,
        Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>,
        "axboe@...nel.dk" <axboe@...nel.dk>,
        James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@...senpartnership.com>,
        Elena Reshetova <elena.reshetova@...el.com>,
        Hans Liljestrand <ishkamiel@...il.com>,
        David Windsor <dwindsor@...il.com>, x86@...nel.org,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        Jann Horn <jann@...jh.net>,
        "David S. Miller" <davem@...emloft.net>,
        linux-arch@...r.kernel.org, kernel-hardening@...ts.openwall.com,
        PaX Team <pageexec@...email.hu>
Subject: Re: [kernel-hardening] Re: [PATCH] x86/refcount: Implement fast
 refcount_t handling

On Mon, Apr 24, 2017 at 10:32 AM, Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 21, 2017 at 03:09:39PM -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
>> This patch ports the x86-specific atomic overflow handling from PaX's
>> PAX_REFCOUNT to the upstream refcount_t API. This is an updated version
>> from PaX that eliminates the saturation race condition by resetting the
>> atomic counter back to the INT_MAX saturation value on both overflow and
>> underflow. To win a race, a system would have to have INT_MAX threads
>> simultaneously overflow before the saturation handler runs.
>
> And is this impossible? Highly unlikely I'll grant you, but absolutely
> impossible?
>
> Also, you forgot nr_cpus in your bound. Afaict the worst case here is
> O(nr_tasks + 3*nr_cpus).
>
> Because PaX does it, is not a correctness argument. And this really
> wants one.

>From include/linux/threads.h:

/*
 * A maximum of 4 million PIDs should be enough for a while.
 * [NOTE: PID/TIDs are limited to 2^29 ~= 500+ million, see futex.h.]
 */
#define PID_MAX_LIMIT (CONFIG_BASE_SMALL ? PAGE_SIZE * 8 : \
(sizeof(long) > 4 ? 4 * 1024 * 1024 : PID_MAX_DEFAULT))

AFAICS that means you can only have up to 2^22 running tasks at
a time, since every running task requires a PID in the init pid namespace.