This is a note to let you know that I've just added the patch titled arm64: Make arch_randomize_brk avoid stack area to the 3.14-stable tree which can be found at: http://www.kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/stable-queue.git;a=summary The filename of the patch is: arm64-make-arch_randomize_brk-avoid-stack-area.patch and it can be found in the queue-3.14 subdirectory. If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to the stable tree, please let <stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> know about it. >From tixy@xxxxxxxxxx Mon May 16 16:59:23 2016 From: "Jon Medhurst (Tixy)" <tixy@xxxxxxxxxx> Date: Tue, 10 May 2016 18:20:18 +0100 Subject: arm64: Make arch_randomize_brk avoid stack area To: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Cc: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@xxxxxxx>, Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Message-ID: <1462900818.3220.14.camel@xxxxxxxxxx> From: Jon Medhurst <tixy@xxxxxxxxxx> [As mentioned in the commit message, the problem this patch fixes can't occur in kernels with commit d1fd836dcf00, i.e Linux 4.1 and later., but earlier kernel versions need this fix.] When a process is created, various address randomisations could end up colluding to place the address of brk in the stack memory. This would mean processes making small heap based memory allocations are in danger of having them overwriting, or overwritten by, the stack. Another consequence, is that even for processes that make no use of brk, the output of /proc/*/maps may show the stack area listed as '[heap]' rather than '[stack]'. Apart from being misleading this causes fatal errors with the Android run-time like: "No [stack] line found in /proc/self/task/*/maps" To prevent this problem pick a limit for brk that allows for the stack's memory. At the same time we remove randomize_base() as that was only used by arch_randomize_brk(). Note, in practice, since commit d1fd836dcf00 ("mm: split ET_DYN ASLR from mmap ASLR") this problem shouldn't occur because the address chosen for loading binaries is well clear of the stack, however, prior to that the problem does occur because of the following... The memory layout of a task is determined by arch_pick_mmap_layout. If address randomisation is enabled (task has flag PF_RANDOMIZE) this sets mmap_base to a random address at the top of task memory just below a region calculated to allow for a stack which itself may have a random base address. Any mmap operations that then happen which require an address allocating will use the topdown allocation method, i.e. the first allocated memory will be at the top of memory, just below the area set aside for the stack. When a relocatable binary is loaded into a new process by load_elf_binary and randomised address are enabled, it uses a 'load_bias' of zero, so that when mmap is called to create a memory region for it, a new address is picked (address zero not being available). As this is the first memory region in the task, it gets the region just below the stack, as described previously. The loader then set's brk to the end of the elf data section, which will be near the end of the loaded binary and then it calls arch_randomize_brk. As this currently stands, this adds a random amount to brk, which unfortunately may take it into the address range where the stack lies. Testing: These changes have been tested on Linux 3.18 (where the collision of brk and stack can happen) using 100000 invocations of a program [1] that can display the offset of a process's brk... $for i in $(seq 100000); do ./aslr --report brk ; done This shows values of brk are evenly distributed over a 1GB range before this change is applied. After this change the distribution shows a slope where lower values for brk are more common and upper values have about half the frequency of those. [1] http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-bugcontrol/qa-regression-testing/master/files/2499/scripts/kernel-security/aslr/ Signed-off-by: Jon Medhurst <tixy@xxxxxxxxxx> Acked-by: Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Acked-by: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@xxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- I originally posted this to the ARM kernel list and arm64 maintainers, see http://www.spinics.net/lists/arm-kernel/msg502238.html arch/arm64/kernel/process.c | 24 ++++++++++++++++++------ 1 file changed, 18 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-) --- a/arch/arm64/kernel/process.c +++ b/arch/arm64/kernel/process.c @@ -350,15 +350,27 @@ unsigned long arch_align_stack(unsigned return sp & ~0xf; } -static unsigned long randomize_base(unsigned long base) +unsigned long arch_randomize_brk(struct mm_struct *mm) { + unsigned long base = mm->brk; unsigned long range_end = base + (STACK_RND_MASK << PAGE_SHIFT) + 1; - return randomize_range(base, range_end, 0) ? : base; -} + unsigned long max_stack, range_limit; -unsigned long arch_randomize_brk(struct mm_struct *mm) -{ - return randomize_base(mm->brk); + /* + * Determine how much room we need to leave available for the stack. + * We limit this to a reasonable value, because extremely large or + * unlimited stacks are always going to bump up against brk at some + * point and we don't want to fail to randomise brk in those cases. + */ + max_stack = rlimit(RLIMIT_STACK); + if (max_stack > SZ_128M) + max_stack = SZ_128M; + + range_limit = mm->start_stack - max_stack - 1; + if (range_end > range_limit) + range_end = range_limit; + + return randomize_range(base, range_end, 0) ? : base; } unsigned long randomize_et_dyn(unsigned long base) Patches currently in stable-queue which might be from tixy@xxxxxxxxxx are queue-3.14/arm64-make-arch_randomize_brk-avoid-stack-area.patch -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe stable" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html