Re: [PATCH 1/2 v2] kprobe: Do not use uaccess functions to access kernel memory that can fault

[Alexei Starovoitov]

On Fri, Feb 22, 2019 at 02:30:26PM -0500, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> On Fri, 22 Feb 2019 11:27:05 -0800
> Alexei Starovoitov <alexei.starovoitov@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, Feb 22, 2019 at 09:43:14AM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > > 
> > > Then we should still probably fix up "__probe_kernel_read()" to not
> > > allow user accesses. The easiest way to do that is actually likely to
> > > use the "unsafe_get_user()" functions *without* doing a
> > > uaccess_begin(), which will mean that modern CPU's will simply fault
> > > on a kernel access to user space.  
> > 
> > On bpf side the bpf_probe_read() helper just calls probe_kernel_read()
> > and users pass both user and kernel addresses into it and expect
> > that the helper will actually try to read from that address.
> > 
> > If __probe_kernel_read will suddenly start failing on all user addresses
> > it will break the expectations.
> > How do we solve it in bpf_probe_read?
> > Call probe_kernel_read and if that fails call unsafe_get_user byte-by-byte
> > in the loop?
> > That's doable, but people already complain that bpf_probe_read() is slow
> > and shows up in their perf report.
> 
> We're changing kprobes to add a specific flag to say that we want to
> differentiate between kernel or user reads. Can this be done with
> bpf_probe_read()? If it's showing up in perf report, I doubt a single

so you're saying you will break existing kprobe scripts?
I don't think it's a good idea.
It's not acceptable to break bpf_probe_read uapi.