Re: [RFC PATCH v11 06/29] KVM: Introduce KVM_SET_USER_MEMORY_REGION2

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On 7/29/23 02:03, Sean Christopherson wrote:
KVM would need to do multiple uaccess reads, but that's not a big
deal.  Am I missing something, or did past us just get too clever and
miss the obvious solution?

You would have to introduce struct kvm_userspace_memory_region2 anyway, though not a new ioctl, for two reasons:

1) the current size of the struct is part of the userspace API via the KVM_SET_USER_MEMORY_REGION #define, so introducing a new struct is the easiest way to preserve this

2) the struct can (at least theoretically) enter the ABI of a shared library, and such mismatches are really hard to detect and resolve. So it's better to add the padding to a new struct, and keep struct kvm_userspace_memory_region backwards-compatible.


As to whether we should introduce a new ioctl: doing so makes KVM_SET_USER_MEMORY_REGION's detection of bad flags a bit more robust; it's not like we cannot introduce new flags at all, of course, but having out-of-bounds reads as a side effect of new flags is a bit nasty. Protecting programs from their own bugs gets into diminishing returns very quickly, but introducing a new ioctl can make exploits a bit harder when struct kvm_userspace_memory_region is on the stack and adjacent to an attacker-controlled location.

Paolo




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