linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v5] mm/gup: disallow GUP writing to file-backed mappings by default

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Date:   Fri, 28 Apr 2023 17:41:33 +0200
From:   David Hildenbrand <david@...hat.com>
To:     Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@...dia.com>
Cc:     Lorenzo Stoakes <lstoakes@...il.com>, linux-mm@...ck.org,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Jens Axboe <axboe@...nel.dk>,
        Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>,
        Dennis Dalessandro <dennis.dalessandro@...nelisnetworks.com>,
        Leon Romanovsky <leon@...nel.org>,
        Christian Benvenuti <benve@...co.com>,
        Nelson Escobar <neescoba@...co.com>,
        Bernard Metzler <bmt@...ich.ibm.com>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>,
        Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@...nel.org>,
        Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@....com>,
        Alexander Shishkin <alexander.shishkin@...ux.intel.com>,
        Jiri Olsa <jolsa@...nel.org>,
        Namhyung Kim <namhyung@...nel.org>,
        Ian Rogers <irogers@...gle.com>,
        Adrian Hunter <adrian.hunter@...el.com>,
        Bjorn Topel <bjorn@...nel.org>,
        Magnus Karlsson <magnus.karlsson@...el.com>,
        Maciej Fijalkowski <maciej.fijalkowski@...el.com>,
        Jonathan Lemon <jonathan.lemon@...il.com>,
        "David S . Miller" <davem@...emloft.net>,
        Eric Dumazet <edumazet@...gle.com>,
        Jakub Kicinski <kuba@...nel.org>,
        Paolo Abeni <pabeni@...hat.com>,
        Christian Brauner <brauner@...nel.org>,
        Richard Cochran <richardcochran@...il.com>,
        Alexei Starovoitov <ast@...nel.org>,
        Daniel Borkmann <daniel@...earbox.net>,
        Jesper Dangaard Brouer <hawk@...nel.org>,
        John Fastabend <john.fastabend@...il.com>,
        linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org, linux-perf-users@...r.kernel.org,
        netdev@...r.kernel.org, bpf@...r.kernel.org,
        Oleg Nesterov <oleg@...hat.com>,
        John Hubbard <jhubbard@...dia.com>, Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>,
        "Kirill A . Shutemov" <kirill@...temov.name>,
        Pavel Begunkov <asml.silence@...il.com>,
        Mika Penttila <mpenttil@...hat.com>,
        David Howells <dhowells@...hat.com>,
        Christoph Hellwig <hch@....de>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v5] mm/gup: disallow GUP writing to file-backed mappings
 by default

On 28.04.23 17:27, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 28, 2023 at 05:08:27PM +0200, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> 
>>> I think this is broken today and we should block it. We know from
>>> experiments with RDMA that doing exactly this triggers kernel oop's.
>>
>> I never saw similar reports in the wild (especially targeted at RHEL), so is
>> this still a current issue that has not been mitigated? Or is it just so
>> hard to actually trigger?
> 
> People send RDMA related bug reports to us, and we tell them not to do
> this stuff :)
> 
>>> I'm skeptical that anyone can actually do this combination of things
>>> successfully without getting kernel crashes or file data corruption -
>>> ie there is no real user to break.
>>
>> I am pretty sure that there are such VM users, because on the libvirt level
>> it's completely unclear which features trigger what behavior :/
> 
> IDK, why on earth would anyone want to do this? Using VFIO forces all
> the memory to become resident so what was the point of making it file
> backed in the first place?

As I said, copy-and paste, incremental changes to domain XMLs. I've seen 
some crazy domain XMLs in bug reports.

> 
> I'm skeptical there are real users even if it now requires special
> steps to be crashy/corrupty.

In any case, I think we should document the possible implications of 
this patch. I gave one use case that could be broken.

> 
>>>> Sure, we could warn, or convert individual users using a flag (io_uring).
>>>> But maybe we should invest more energy on a fix?
>>>
>>> It has been years now, I think we need to admit a fix is still years
>>> away. Blocking the security problem may even motivate more people to
>>> work on a fix.
>>
>> Maybe we should make this a topic this year at LSF/MM (again?). At least we
>> learned a lot about GUP, what might work, what might not work, and got a
>> depper understanding (+ motivation to fix? :) ) the issue at hand.
> 
> We keep having the topic.. This is the old argument that the FS people
> say the MM isn't following its inode and dirty lifetime rules and the
> MM people say the FS isn't following its refcounting rules <shrug>

:/ so we have to discuss it ... again I guess.

> 
>>> Security is the primary case where we have historically closed uAPI
>>> items.
>>
>> As this patch
>>
>> 1) Does not tackle GUP-fast
>> 2) Does not take care of !FOLL_LONGTERM
>>
>> I am not convinced by the security argument in regard to this patch.
> 
> It is incremental and a temperature check to see what kind of real
> users exist. We have no idea right now, just speculation.

Right, but again, if we start talking about security it's a different 
thing IMHO.

>> Everything else sounds like band-aids to me, is insufficient, and might
>> cause more harm than actually help IMHO. Especially the gup-fast case is
>> extremely easy to work-around in malicious user space.
> 
> It is true this patch should probably block gup_fast when using
> FOLL_LONGTERM as well, just like we used to do for the DAX check.

Then we'd at least fix the security issue for all FOLL_LONGTERM completely.

-- 
Thanks,

David / dhildenb