linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v2 3/5] mm: madvise: implement lightweight guard page mechanism

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Message-ID: <9dbf378f-5f5c-429c-bdb1-813ef3091881@lucifer.local>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2024 21:30:47 +0100
From: Lorenzo Stoakes <lorenzo.stoakes@...cle.com>
To: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@...e.cz>
Cc: David Hildenbrand <david@...hat.com>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@...gle.com>,
        "Liam R . Howlett" <Liam.Howlett@...cle.com>,
        Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>,
        "Paul E . McKenney" <paulmck@...nel.org>, Jann Horn <jannh@...gle.com>,
        linux-mm@...ck.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        Muchun Song <muchun.song@...ux.dev>,
        Richard Henderson <richard.henderson@...aro.org>,
        Ivan Kokshaysky <ink@...assic.park.msu.ru>,
        Matt Turner <mattst88@...il.com>,
        Thomas Bogendoerfer <tsbogend@...ha.franken.de>,
        "James E . J . Bottomley" <James.Bottomley@...senpartnership.com>,
        Helge Deller <deller@....de>, Chris Zankel <chris@...kel.net>,
        Max Filippov <jcmvbkbc@...il.com>, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>,
        linux-alpha@...r.kernel.org, linux-mips@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-parisc@...r.kernel.org, linux-arch@...r.kernel.org,
        Shuah Khan <shuah@...nel.org>, Christian Brauner <brauner@...nel.org>,
        linux-kselftest@...r.kernel.org,
        Sidhartha Kumar <sidhartha.kumar@...cle.com>,
        Jeff Xu <jeffxu@...omium.org>, Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>,
        linux-api@...r.kernel.org, John Hubbard <jhubbard@...dia.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 3/5] mm: madvise: implement lightweight guard page
 mechanism

On Mon, Oct 21, 2024 at 10:25:06PM +0200, Vlastimil Babka wrote:
> On 10/21/24 22:17, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> > On 21.10.24 22:11, Vlastimil Babka wrote:
> >> On 10/20/24 18:20, Lorenzo Stoakes wrote:
> >>
> >> <snip>
> >>
> >>> +static long madvise_guard_poison(struct vm_area_struct *vma,
> >>> +				 struct vm_area_struct **prev,
> >>> +				 unsigned long start, unsigned long end)
> >>> +{
> >>> +	long err;
> >>> +
> >>> +	*prev = vma;
> >>> +	if (!is_valid_guard_vma(vma, /* allow_locked = */false))
> >>> +		return -EINVAL;
> >>> +
> >>> +	/*
> >>> +	 * If we install poison markers, then the range is no longer
> >>> +	 * empty from a page table perspective and therefore it's
> >>> +	 * appropriate to have an anon_vma.
> >>> +	 *
> >>> +	 * This ensures that on fork, we copy page tables correctly.
> >>> +	 */
> >>> +	err = anon_vma_prepare(vma);
> >>> +	if (err)
> >>> +		return err;
> >>> +
> >>> +	/*
> >>> +	 * Optimistically try to install the guard poison pages first. If any
> >>> +	 * non-guard pages are encountered, give up and zap the range before
> >>> +	 * trying again.
> >>> +	 */
> >>
> >> Should the page walker become powerful enough to handle this in one go? :)
> >> But sure, if it's too big a task to teach it to zap ptes with all the tlb
> >> flushing etc (I assume it's something page walkers don't do today), it makes
> >> sense to do it this way.
> >> Or we could require userspace to zap first (MADV_DONTNEED), but that would
> >> unnecessarily mean extra syscalls for the use case of an allocator debug
> >> mode that wants to turn freed memory to guards to catch use after free.
> >> So this seems like a good compromise...
> >
> > Yes please, KIS.
>
> You mean "require userspace to zap first (MADV_DONTNEED)" ?

What on earth are you talking about? This is crazy, we can detect if we need to
zap with the page walker then just zap? Why would we do this?

The solution as is is perfectly simple... What is the justification for
this on any level?

Again, if you think there's a _genuine_ security/DoS issue here you're
going to really need to demonstrate it rather than hand wave?

>
> I'd normally agree with the KIS principle, but..
>
> > We can always implement support for that later if
>
> it would either mean later we change behavior (installing guards on
> non-zapped PTEs would have to be an error now but maybe start working later,
> which is user observable change thus can break somebody)
>
> > really required (leave behavior open when documenting).
>
> and leaving it open when documenting doesn't really mean anything for the
> "we don't break userspace" promise vs what the implementation actually does.
>
> Or the changed behavior would need to come with a new MADVISE mode. Not
> appealing as it's a mess already.
>
> So since its uapi we should aim for the best from the start.
>
>

Best is 'call the madvise(), guard pages installed' which is what it is
now.