On Tue, Aug 17, 2021 at 11:24:29AM -0700, Yu, Yu-cheng wrote: > Indeed, this can be looked at in a few ways. We can visualize pte_write() > as 'CPU can write to it with MOV' or 'CPU can write to it with any opcodes'. > Depending on whatever pte_write() is, copy-on-write code can be adjusted > accordingly. Can be? I think you should exclude shadow stack pages from being writable and treat them as read-only. How the CPU writes them is immaterial - pte/pmd_write() is used by normal kernel code to query whether the page is writable or not by any instruction - not by the CPU. And since normal kernel code cannot write shadow stack pages, then for that code those pages are read-only. If special kernel code using shadow stack management insns needs to modify a shadow stack, then it can check whether a page is pte/pmd_shstk() but that code is special anyway. Hell, a shadow stack page is (Write=0, Dirty=1) so calling it writable ^^^^^^^ is simply wrong. Thx. -- Regards/Gruss, Boris. https://people.kernel.org/tglx/notes-about-netiquette