On Sun, Jul 10, 2016 at 5:03 AM, PaX Team <pageexec@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 10 Jul 2016 at 11:16, Ingo Molnar wrote: > >> * PaX Team <pageexec@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >> > On 9 Jul 2016 at 14:27, Andy Lutomirski wrote: >> > >> > > I like the series, but I have one minor nit to pick. The effect of this >> > > series is to harden usercopy, but most of the code is really about >> > > infrastructure to validate that a pointed-to object is valid. >> > >> > actually USERCOPY has never been about validating pointers. its sole purpose is >> > to validate the *size* argument of copy*user calls, a very specific form of >> > runtime bounds checking. >> >> What this code has been about originally is largely immaterial, unless you can >> formulate it into a technical argument. > > we design defense mechanisms for specific and clear purposes, starting with > a threat model, evaluating defense options based on various criteria, etc. > USERCOPY underwent this same process and taking it out of its original context > means that all you get in the end is cargo cult security (wouldn't be the first > time it has happened (ExecShield, ASLR, etc)). > > that said, i actually started that discussion but for some reason you chose > not to respond to that one part of my mail so let me ask it again: > > what kind of checks are you thinking of here? and more fundamentally, against > what kind of threats? > > as far as i'm concerned, a defense mechanism is only as good as its underlying > threat model. by validating pointers (for yet to be stated security related > properties) you're presumably assuming some kind of threat and unless stated > clearly what that threat is (unintended pointer modification through memory > corruption and/or other bugs?) noone can tell whether the proposed defense > mechanism will actually be effective in preventing exploitation. it is the > worst kind of defense that doesn't actually achieve its stated goals, that > way lies false sense of security and i hope noone here is in that business. I'm imaging security bugs that involve buffer length corruption but that don't call copy_to/from_user. Hardened usercopy shuts expoitation down if the first use of the corrupt size is copy_to/from_user or similar. I bet that a bit better coverage could be achieved by instrumenting more functions. To be clear: I'm not objecting to calling the overall feature hardened usercopy or similar. I object to CONFIG_HAVE_HARDENED_USERCOPY_ALLOCATOR. That feature is *used* for hardened usercopy but is not, in and of itself, a usercopy thing. It's an object / memory range validation thing. So we'll feel silly down the road if we use it for something else and the config option name has nothing to do with the feature. >> > [...] like the renaming of .data..read_only to .data..ro_after_init which also >> > had nothing to do with init but everything to do with objects being conceptually >> > read-only... >> >> .data..ro_after_init objects get written to during bootup so it's conceptually >> quite confusing to name it "read-only" without any clear qualifiers. >> >> That it's named consistently with its role of "read-write before init and read >> only after init" on the other hand is not confusing at all. Not sure what your >> problem is with the new name. > > the new name reflects a complete misunderstanding of the PaX feature it was based > on (typical case of cargo cult security). in particular, the __read_only facility > in PaX is part of a defense mechanism that attempts to solve a specific problem > (like everything else) and that problem has nothing whatsoever to do with what > happens before/after the kernel init process. enforcing read-ony kernel memory at > the end of kernel initialization is an implementation detail only and wasn't even > true always (and still isn't true for kernel modules for example): in the linux 2.4 > days PaX actually enforced read-only kernel memory properties in startup_32 already > but i relaxed that for the 2.6+ port as the maintenance cost (finding out and > handling new exceptional cases) wasn't worth it. > > also naming things after their implementation is poor taste and can result in > even bigger problems down the line since as soon as the implementation changes, > you will have a flag day or have to keep a bad name. this is a lesson that the > REFCOUNT submission will learn too since the kernel's atomic*_t types (an > implementation detail) are used extensively for different purposes, instead of > using specialized types (kref is a good example of that). for .data..ro_after_init > the lesson will happen when you try to add back the remaining pieces from PaX, > such as module handling and not-always-const-in-the-C-sense objects and associated > accessors. The name is related to how the thing works. If I understand correctly, in PaX, the idea is to make some things readonly and use pax_open_kernel(), etc to write it as needed. This is a nifty mechanism, but it's *not* what .data..ro_after_init does upstream. If I mark something __ro_after_init, then I can write it freely during boot, but I can't write it thereafter. In contrast, if I put something in .rodata (using 'const', for example), then I must not write it *at all* unless I use special helpers (kmap, pax_open_kernel, etc). So the practical effect from a programer's perspective of __ro_after_init is quite different from .rodata, and I think the names should reflect that. (And yes, the upstream kernel should soon have __ro_after_init working in modules. And the not-always-const-in-the-C-sense objects using accessors will need changes to add those accessors, and we can and should change the annotation on the object itself at the same time. But if I mark something __ro_after_init, I can write it using normal C during init, and there's nothing wrong with that.) --Andy -- 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
