On Mon, Feb 11, 2019 at 3:28 PM Igor Stoppa <igor.stoppa@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > at last I'm able to resume work on the memory protection patchset I've > proposed some time ago. This version should address comments received so > far and introduce support for arm64. Details below. Cool! > Patch-set implementing write-rare memory protection for statically > allocated data. It seems like this could be expanded in the future to cover dynamic memory too (i.e. just a separate base range in the mm). > Its purpose is to keep write protected the kernel data which is seldom > modified, especially if altering it can be exploited during an attack. > > There is no read overhead, however writing requires special operations that > are probably unsuitable for often-changing data. > The use is opt-in, by applying the modifier __wr_after_init to a variable > declaration. > > As the name implies, the write protection kicks in only after init() is > completed; before that moment, the data is modifiable in the usual way. > > Current Limitations: > * supports only data which is allocated statically, at build time. > * supports only x86_64 and arm64;other architectures need to provide own > backend It looked like only the memset() needed architecture support. Is there a reason for not being able to implement memset() in terms of an inefficient put_user() loop instead? That would eliminate the need for per-arch support, yes? > - I've added a simple example: the protection of ima_policy_flags You'd also looked at SELinux too, yes? What other things could be targeted for protection? (It seems we can't yet protect page tables themselves with this...) > - the x86_64 user space address range is double the size of the kernel > address space, so it's possible to randomize the beginning of the > mapping of the kernel address space, but on arm64 they have the same > size, so it's not possible to do the same Only the wr_rare section needs mapping, though, yes? > - I'm not sure if it's correct, since it doesn't seem to be that common in > kernel sources, but instead of using #defines for overriding default > function calls, I'm using "weak" for the default functions. The tradition is to use #defines for easier readability, but "weak" continues to be a thing. *shrug* This will be a nice addition to protect more of the kernel's static data from write-what-where attacks. :) -- Kees Cook
