Quoting Linus: I do think that it would be a good idea to very expressly document the fact that it's not that the user access itself is unsafe. I do agree that things like "get_user()" want to be protected, but not because of any direct bugs or problems with get_user() and friends, but simply because get_user() is an excellent source of a pointer that is obviously controlled from a potentially attacking user space. So it's a prime candidate for then finding _subsequent_ accesses that can then be used to perturb the cache. Unlike the '__get_user' case 'get_user' includes the address limit check near the pointer de-reference. With that locality the speculation can be mitigated with pointer narrowing rather than a barrier. Where the narrowing is performed by: cmp %limit, %ptr sbb %mask, %mask and %mask, %ptr With respect to speculation the value of %ptr is either less than %limit or NULL. Co-developed-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Andy Lutomirski <luto@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Al Viro <viro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@xxxxxxxxx> Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: x86@xxxxxxxxxx Signed-off-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@xxxxxxxxx> --- arch/x86/lib/getuser.S | 10 ++++++++++ 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+) diff --git a/arch/x86/lib/getuser.S b/arch/x86/lib/getuser.S index c97d935a29e8..e7a1a9421998 100644 --- a/arch/x86/lib/getuser.S +++ b/arch/x86/lib/getuser.S @@ -40,6 +40,8 @@ ENTRY(__get_user_1) mov PER_CPU_VAR(current_task), %_ASM_DX cmp TASK_addr_limit(%_ASM_DX),%_ASM_AX jae bad_get_user + sbb %_ASM_DX, %_ASM_DX /* 0 - (uptr < addr_limit) */ + and %_ASM_DX, %_ASM_AX ASM_STAC 1: movzbl (%_ASM_AX),%edx xor %eax,%eax @@ -54,6 +56,8 @@ ENTRY(__get_user_2) mov PER_CPU_VAR(current_task), %_ASM_DX cmp TASK_addr_limit(%_ASM_DX),%_ASM_AX jae bad_get_user + sbb %_ASM_DX, %_ASM_DX /* 0 - (uptr < addr_limit) */ + and %_ASM_DX, %_ASM_AX ASM_STAC 2: movzwl -1(%_ASM_AX),%edx xor %eax,%eax @@ -68,6 +72,8 @@ ENTRY(__get_user_4) mov PER_CPU_VAR(current_task), %_ASM_DX cmp TASK_addr_limit(%_ASM_DX),%_ASM_AX jae bad_get_user + sbb %_ASM_DX, %_ASM_DX /* 0 - (uptr < addr_limit) */ + and %_ASM_DX, %_ASM_AX ASM_STAC 3: movl -3(%_ASM_AX),%edx xor %eax,%eax @@ -83,6 +89,8 @@ ENTRY(__get_user_8) mov PER_CPU_VAR(current_task), %_ASM_DX cmp TASK_addr_limit(%_ASM_DX),%_ASM_AX jae bad_get_user + sbb %_ASM_DX, %_ASM_DX /* 0 - (uptr < addr_limit) */ + and %_ASM_DX, %_ASM_AX ASM_STAC 4: movq -7(%_ASM_AX),%rdx xor %eax,%eax @@ -94,6 +102,8 @@ ENTRY(__get_user_8) mov PER_CPU_VAR(current_task), %_ASM_DX cmp TASK_addr_limit(%_ASM_DX),%_ASM_AX jae bad_get_user_8 + sbb %_ASM_DX, %_ASM_DX /* 0 - (uptr < addr_limit) */ + and %_ASM_DX, %_ASM_AX ASM_STAC 4: movl -7(%_ASM_AX),%edx 5: movl -3(%_ASM_AX),%ecx