This protection is a modified version of the x86 PAX_REFCOUNT implementation from PaX/grsecurity. This speeds up the refcount_t API by duplicating the existing atomic_t implementation with a single instruction added to detect if the refcount has wrapped past INT_MAX (or below 0) resulting in a signed value. Note that this protection is only meaningful for the overflow case, as that can be detected and stopped before the reference is freed and left to be abused by an attacker. Catching the "inc from 0" case is nice to have, but only indicates that a use-after-free has already happened. Such notifications are likely avoidable by an attacker that has already exploited a use-after-free vulnerability. With this overflow protection, the use-after-free cannot happen in the first place, avoiding the vulnerability entirely. On overflow detection (actually "signed value" detection), the offending process is killed, a report is generated, and the refcount value is reset to INT_MAX. This allows the system to attempt to keep operating. Another option, not done in this patch, would be to reset the counter to (INT_MIN / 2) to trap all future refcount inc or dec actions. Yet another option would be to choose (INT_MAX - N) with some small N to provide some headroom for legitimate users of the reference counter. On the matter of races, since the entire range beyond INT_MAX but before 0 is signed, every inc will trap, leaving no overflow-only race condition. As for performance, this implementation adds a single "js" instruction to a copy of the regular atomic_t operations, making this comparable to the existing atomic_t operations. The detection routine uses a combination of an alternative section exception handler and trap to return back to C for handling the error condition with minimal increase in text size. Various differences from PaX: - applied only to refcount_t, not atomic_t - rebased to -next - reorganized refcount error handler and section declaration locations - uses "js" instead of "jo" to trap all signed results instead of just under/overflow transitions v2: - fix instruction pointer decrement bug; thejh - switch to js; pax-team - improve commit log - extract rmwcc macro helpers for better readability - implemented checks in inc_not_zero interface - adjusted reset values -Kees
