linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] KVM/x86: remove WARN_ON() for when vm

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] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:   Thu, 1 Feb 2018 12:07:34 -0800
From:   Eric Biggers <ebiggers3@...il.com>
To:     Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@...hat.com>
Cc:     Radim Krčmář <rkrcmar@...hat.com>,
        kvm@...r.kernel.org, linux-mm@...ck.org,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, syzkaller-bugs@...glegroups.com,
        Eric Biggers <ebiggers@...gle.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] KVM/x86: remove WARN_ON() for when vm_munmap() fails

On Thu, Feb 01, 2018 at 12:12:00PM -0500, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> On 01/02/2018 10:33, Radim Krčmář wrote:
> > 2018-01-31 17:30-0800, Eric Biggers:
> >> From: Eric Biggers <ebiggers@...gle.com>
> >>
> >> On x86, special KVM memslots such as the TSS region have anonymous
> >> memory mappings created on behalf of userspace, and these mappings are
> >> removed when the VM is destroyed.
> >>
> >> It is however possible for removing these mappings via vm_munmap() to
> >> fail.  This can most easily happen if the thread receives SIGKILL while
> >> it's waiting to acquire ->mmap_sem.   This triggers the 'WARN_ON(r < 0)'
> >> in __x86_set_memory_region().  syzkaller was able to hit this, using
> >> 'exit()' to send the SIGKILL.  Note that while the vm_munmap() failure
> >> results in the mapping not being removed immediately, it is not leaked
> >> forever but rather will be freed when the process exits.
> >>
> >> It's not really possible to handle this failure properly, so almost
> > 
> > We could check "r < 0 && r != -EINTR" to get rid of the easily
> > triggerable warning.
> 
> Considering that vm_munmap uses down_write_killable, that would be
> preferrable I think.
> 

Don't be so sure that vm_munmap() can't fail for other reasons as well :-)
Remember, userspace can mess around with its address space.

And indeed, looking closer, I see there was a previous report of this same WARN
on an older kernel which in vm_munmap() still had down_write() instead of
down_write_killable().  The reproducer in that case concurrently called
personality(ADDR_LIMIT_3GB) to reduce its address limit after the mapping was
already created above 3 GiB.  Then the vm_munmap() returned EINVAL since
'start > TASK_SIZE'.

So I don't think we should check for specific error codes.  We could make it a
pr_warn_ratelimited() though, if we still want some notification that there was
a problem without implying it is a kernel bug as WARN_ON() does.

- Eric