On Tue, Mar 24, 2020 at 9:32 PM Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > This is a continuation and refactoring of Elena's earlier effort to add > kernel stack base offset randomization. In the time since the previous > discussions, two attacks[1][2] were made public that depended on stack > determinism, so we're no longer in the position of "this is a good idea > but we have no examples of attacks". :) [...] > [1] https://a13xp0p0v.github.io/2020/02/15/CVE-2019-18683.html This one only starts using the stack's location after having parsed it out of dmesg (which in any environment that wants to provide a reasonable level of security really ought to be restricted to root), right? If you give people read access to dmesg, they can leak all sorts of pointers; not just the stack pointer, but also whatever else happens to be in the registers at that point - which is likely to give the attacker more ways to place controlled data at a known location. See e.g. <https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2018/09/a-cache-invalidation-bug-in-linux.html>, which leaks the pointer to a BPF map out of dmesg. Also, are you sure that it isn't possible to make the syscall that leaked its stack pointer never return to userspace (via ptrace or SIGSTOP or something like that), and therefore never realign its stack, while keeping some controlled data present on the syscall's stack? > [2] https://repositorio-aberto.up.pt/bitstream/10216/125357/2/374717.pdf That's a moderately large document; which specific part are you referencing?
