On Fri, 2017-11-10 at 11:31 -0800, Dave Hansen wrote:
> From: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> Global pages stay in the TLB across context switches. Since all
> contexts
> share the same kernel mapping, these mappings are marked as global
> pages
> so kernel entries in the TLB are not flushed out on a context switch.
>
> But, even having these entries in the TLB opens up something that an
> attacker can use [1].
>
> That means that even when KAISER switches page tables on return to
> user
> space the global pages would stay in the TLB cache.
>
> Disable global pages so that kernel TLB entries can be flushed before
> returning to user space. This way, all accesses to kernel addresses
> from
> userspace result in a TLB miss independent of the existence of a
> kernel
> mapping.
>
> Replace _PAGE_GLOBAL by __PAGE_KERNEL_GLOBAL and keep _PAGE_GLOBAL
> available so that it can still be used for a few selected kernel
> mappings
> which must be visible to userspace, when KAISER is enabled, like the
> entry/exit code and data.
Nice changelog.
Why am I pointing this out?
> +++ b/arch/x86/include/asm/pgtable_types.h 2017-11-10
> 11:22:06.626244956 -0800
> @@ -179,8 +179,20 @@ enum page_cache_mode {
> #define PAGE_READONLY_EXEC __pgprot(_PAGE_PRESENT |
> _PAGE_USER | \
> _PAGE_ACCESSED)
>
> +/*
> + * Disable global pages for anything using the default
> + * __PAGE_KERNEL* macros. PGE will still be enabled
> + * and _PAGE_GLOBAL may still be used carefully.
> + */
> +#ifdef CONFIG_KAISER
> +#define __PAGE_KERNEL_GLOBAL 0
> +#else
> +#define __PAGE_KERNEL_GLOBAL _PAGE_GLOBAL
> +#endif
> +
The comment above could use a little more info
on why things are done that way, though :)
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