One of the easiest ways to protect the kernel from attack is to reduce the internal attack surface exposed when a "write" flaw is available. By making as much of the kernel read-only as possible, we reduce the attack surface. Many things are written to only during __init, and never changed again. These cannot be made "const" since the compiler will do the wrong thing (we do actually need to write to them). Instead, move these items into a memory region that will be made read-only during mark_rodata_ro() which happens after all kernel __init code has finished. This introduces __ro_after_init as a way to mark such memory, and uses it on the x86 and arm vDSO to kill an extant kernel exploitation method. Also adds a new kernel parameter to help debug future use and adds an lkdtm test to check the results. -Kees v5: - rebased on linux-next (strtobool in -next, x86 vdso merge fixup) - added ARM vDSO patch, david.brown v4: - adjust documentation for strtobool, andy.shevchenko v3: - conslidated mark_rodata_ro() - make CONFIG_DEBUG_RODATA always enabled on x86, mingo - enhanced strtobool and potential callers to use "on"/"off" - use strtobool for rodata= param, gregkh v2: - renamed __read_only to __ro_after_init -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-arch" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
