Message-ID: <8f0913d7-9e77-41e0-91e2-17ca2454b296@intel.com>
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2025 09:42:34 -0700
From: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...el.com>
To: "Luck, Tony" <tony.luck@...el.com>, "Mehta, Sohil"
 <sohil.mehta@...el.com>, "Kirill A. Shutemov"
 <kirill.shutemov@...ux.intel.com>, Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...ux.intel.com>
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Subject: Re: [PATCHv6 01/16] x86/cpu: Enumerate the LASS feature bits

On 6/23/25 09:25, Luck, Tony wrote:
>>> functions. But, the difference in usage between both of them seems very
>>> subtle. Could this be easily misused?
>>
>> Logically there are two completely different things:
>>
>>       1. Touching userspace
>>       2. Touching the lower half of the address space
>>
>> If it's only userspace in the lower half of the address space, then
>> there's no controversy. But the problem obviously occurs when you want
>> to touch kernel mappings in the lower half of the address space.
> 
> Why does the kernel create the mappings to poke kernel text
> for ALTERNATIVE patching in the lower half of the address space?
> 
> Instead of special "we really to want to access the lower addresses"
> code, wouldn't it be easier to map the "poke" virtual addresses in normal
> kernel upper-half space?

The upper half of the address space is shared kernel space, right? Every
PGD has identical contents in the upper half. So if we create a mapping
there,everybody get access to it. Every mm can access it. Every
*process* can access it. It still has kernel permissions of course, but
it's still a place that everybody can get at.

The lower half is *ONLY* accessible to the local mm. In this case, only
the text poking mm. It's a natural, safe, place to create a mapping that
you want to be private and not be exploited.

So, doing it in the upper half is risky.

If we *wanted*, we could have a non-shared PGD entry in the top half of
the address space. But we'd need to reserve its address space and all
that jazz. I'm not sure it's any better than just disabling LASS
enforcement for a moment.

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