forked from Minki/linux
mainlining shenanigans
1507f51255
Introduce "memfd_secret" system call with the ability to create memory
areas visible only in the context of the owning process and not mapped not
only to other processes but in the kernel page tables as well.
The secretmem feature is off by default and the user must explicitly
enable it at the boot time.
Once secretmem is enabled, the user will be able to create a file
descriptor using the memfd_secret() system call. The memory areas created
by mmap() calls from this file descriptor will be unmapped from the kernel
direct map and they will be only mapped in the page table of the processes
that have access to the file descriptor.
Secretmem is designed to provide the following protections:
* Enhanced protection (in conjunction with all the other in-kernel
attack prevention systems) against ROP attacks. Seceretmem makes
"simple" ROP insufficient to perform exfiltration, which increases the
required complexity of the attack. Along with other protections like
the kernel stack size limit and address space layout randomization which
make finding gadgets is really hard, absence of any in-kernel primitive
for accessing secret memory means the one gadget ROP attack can't work.
Since the only way to access secret memory is to reconstruct the missing
mapping entry, the attacker has to recover the physical page and insert
a PTE pointing to it in the kernel and then retrieve the contents. That
takes at least three gadgets which is a level of difficulty beyond most
standard attacks.
* Prevent cross-process secret userspace memory exposures. Once the
secret memory is allocated, the user can't accidentally pass it into the
kernel to be transmitted somewhere. The secreremem pages cannot be
accessed via the direct map and they are disallowed in GUP.
* Harden against exploited kernel flaws. In order to access secretmem,
a kernel-side attack would need to either walk the page tables and
create new ones, or spawn a new privileged uiserspace process to perform
secrets exfiltration using ptrace.
The file descriptor based memory has several advantages over the
"traditional" mm interfaces, such as mlock(), mprotect(), madvise(). File
descriptor approach allows explicit and controlled sharing of the memory
areas, it allows to seal the operations. Besides, file descriptor based
memory paves the way for VMMs to remove the secret memory range from the
userspace hipervisor process, for instance QEMU. Andy Lutomirski says:
"Getting fd-backed memory into a guest will take some possibly major
work in the kernel, but getting vma-backed memory into a guest without
mapping it in the host user address space seems much, much worse."
memfd_secret() is made a dedicated system call rather than an extension to
memfd_create() because it's purpose is to allow the user to create more
secure memory mappings rather than to simply allow file based access to
the memory. Nowadays a new system call cost is negligible while it is way
simpler for userspace to deal with a clear-cut system calls than with a
multiplexer or an overloaded syscall. Moreover, the initial
implementation of memfd_secret() is completely distinct from
memfd_create() so there is no much sense in overloading memfd_create() to
begin with. If there will be a need for code sharing between these
implementation it can be easily achieved without a need to adjust user
visible APIs.
The secret memory remains accessible in the process context using uaccess
primitives, but it is not exposed to the kernel otherwise; secret memory
areas are removed from the direct map and functions in the
follow_page()/get_user_page() family will refuse to return a page that
belongs to the secret memory area.
Once there will be a use case that will require exposing secretmem to the
kernel it will be an opt-in request in the system call flags so that user
would have to decide what data can be exposed to the kernel.
Removing of the pages from the direct map may cause its fragmentation on
architectures that use large pages to map the physical memory which
affects the system performance. However, the original Kconfig text for
CONFIG_DIRECT_GBPAGES said that gigabyte pages in the direct map "... can
improve the kernel's performance a tiny bit ..." (commit
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| arch | ||
| block | ||
| certs | ||
| crypto | ||
| Documentation | ||
| drivers | ||
| fs | ||
| include | ||
| init | ||
| ipc | ||
| kernel | ||
| lib | ||
| LICENSES | ||
| mm | ||
| net | ||
| samples | ||
| scripts | ||
| security | ||
| sound | ||
| tools | ||
| usr | ||
| virt | ||
| .clang-format | ||
| .cocciconfig | ||
| .get_maintainer.ignore | ||
| .gitattributes | ||
| .gitignore | ||
| .mailmap | ||
| COPYING | ||
| CREDITS | ||
| Kbuild | ||
| Kconfig | ||
| MAINTAINERS | ||
| Makefile | ||
| README | ||
Linux kernel
============
There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.
In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``. The formatted documentation can also be read online at:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/
There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.
Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.