linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] fork: Allow stack to be wiped on fork

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Date:   Wed, 21 Feb 2018 01:56:33 +0000
From:   Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>
To:     Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc:     Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>,
        Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>,
        Jann Horn <jannh@...gle.com>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>,
        Laura Abbott <labbott@...hat.com>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
        Al Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>,
        Sahara <keun-o.park@...kmatter.ae>,
        "Levin, Alexander (Sasha Levin)" <alexander.levin@...izon.com>,
        Michal Hocko <mhocko@...e.com>,
        Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@...hat.com>,
        "Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill.shutemov@...ux.intel.com>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Kernel Hardening <kernel-hardening@...ts.openwall.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] fork: Allow stack to be wiped on fork

On Wed, Feb 21, 2018 at 12:31 AM, Andrew Morton
<akpm@...ux-foundation.org> wrote:
> On Tue, 16 Jan 2018 21:50:15 -0800 Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org> wrote:
>
>> One of the classes of kernel stack content leaks is exposing the contents
>> of prior heap or stack contents when a new process stack is allocated.
>> Normally, those stacks are not zeroed, and the old contents remain in
>> place. With some types of stack content exposure flaws, those contents
>> can leak to userspace. Kernels built with CONFIG_CLEAR_STACK_FORK will
>> no longer be vulnerable to this, as the stack will be wiped each time
>> a stack is assigned to a new process. There's not a meaningful change
>> in runtime performance; it almost looks like it provides a benefit.
>>
>> Performing back-to-back kernel builds before:
>>       Run times: 157.86 157.09 158.90 160.94 160.80
>>       Mean: 159.12
>>       Std Dev: 1.54
>>
>> With CONFIG_CLEAR_STACK_FORK=y:
>>       Run times: 159.31 157.34 156.71 158.15 160.81
>>       Mean: 158.46
>>       Std Dev: 1.46
>>
>> ...
>>
>> --- a/arch/Kconfig
>> +++ b/arch/Kconfig
>> @@ -904,6 +904,14 @@ config VMAP_STACK
>>         the stack to map directly to the KASAN shadow map using a formula
>>         that is incorrect if the stack is in vmalloc space.
>>
>> +config CLEAR_STACK_FORK
>> +     bool "Clear the kernel stack at each fork"
>> +     help
>> +       To resist stack content leak flaws, this clears newly allocated
>> +       kernel stacks to keep previously freed heap or stack contents
>> +       from being present in the new stack. This has almost no
>> +       measurable performance impact.
>> +
>
> It would be much nicer to be able to control this at runtime rather
> than compile-time.  Why not a /proc tunable?  We could always use more
> of those ;)

/proc/sys/kernel/hardening_features_that_cost_essentially_nothing?

Seriously, though, why don't we just enable it unconditionally?  It
wouldn't surprise me if it really is a speedup on more workloads than
it slows down -- it'll fill the kernel stack into the CPU cache with
exclusive ownership very quickly (streamily and without actually
reading from memory, I imagine, at least on new enough CPUs) rather
than grabbing each cache line one by one as they get used.