linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] mm/userfaultfd: fix memory corruption due to writeprotect

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Date:   Tue, 22 Dec 2020 17:23:39 -0700
From:   Yu Zhao <yuzhao@...gle.com>
To:     Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc:     Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@...hat.com>,
        Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>,
        Peter Xu <peterx@...hat.com>,
        Nadav Amit <nadav.amit@...il.com>,
        linux-mm <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
        lkml <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Pavel Emelyanov <xemul@...nvz.org>,
        Mike Kravetz <mike.kravetz@...cle.com>,
        Mike Rapoport <rppt@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
        stable <stable@...r.kernel.org>,
        Minchan Kim <minchan@...nel.org>,
        Will Deacon <will@...nel.org>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] mm/userfaultfd: fix memory corruption due to writeprotect

On Tue, Dec 22, 2020 at 04:01:45PM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 22, 2020 at 3:50 PM Linus Torvalds
> <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org> wrote:
> >
> > See zap_pte_range() for an example of doing it right, even in the
> > presence of complexities (ie that has an example of both flushing the
> > TLB, and doing the actual "free the pages after flush", and it does
> > the two cases separately).
> 
> The more I look at the mprotect code, the less I like it. We seem to
> be much better about the TLB flushes in other places (looking at
> mremap, for example). The mprotect code seems to be very laissez-faire
> about the TLB flushing.
> 
> Does adding a TLB flush to before that
> 
>         pte_unmap_unlock(pte - 1, ptl);
> 
> fix things for you?

It definitely does. But if I had to choose, I'd go with holding
mmap_lock for write because 1) it's less likely to storm other CPUs by
IPI and would only have performance impact on processes that use ufd,
which I guess already have high tolerance for not-so-good performance,
and 2) people are spearheading multiple efforts to reduce the mmap_lock
contention, which hopefully would make ufd users suffer less soon.

> That's not the right fix - leaving a stale TLB entry around is fine if
> the TLB entry is more strict wrt protections - but it might be worth
> testing as a "does it at least close the problem" patch.

Well, things get trick if we do this. I'm not sure if I could vouch
such a fix for stable as confident as I do holding mmap_lock for
write.