[PATCH v2 1/3] kgdb: Honour the kprobe blocklist when setting breakpoints

From: Daniel Thompson
Date: Thu Jul 16 2020 - 11:20:12 EST


Currently kgdb has absolutely no safety rails in place to discourage or
prevent a user from placing a breakpoint in dangerous places such as
the debugger's own trap entry/exit and other places where it is not safe
to take synchronous traps.

Introduce a new config symbol KGDB_HONOUR_BLOCKLIST and modify the
default implementation of kgdb_validate_break_address() so that we use
the kprobe blocklist to prohibit instrumentation of critical functions
if the config symbol is set. The config symbol dependencies are set to
ensure that the blocklist will be enabled by default if we enable KGDB
and are compiling for an architecture where we HAVE_KPROBES.

Suggested-by: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Daniel Thompson <daniel.thompson@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
include/linux/kgdb.h | 18 ++++++++++++++++++
kernel/debug/debug_core.c | 4 ++++
kernel/debug/kdb/kdb_bp.c | 9 +++++++++
lib/Kconfig.kgdb | 14 ++++++++++++++
4 files changed, 45 insertions(+)

diff --git a/include/linux/kgdb.h b/include/linux/kgdb.h
index 529116b0cabe..7caba4604edc 100644
--- a/include/linux/kgdb.h
+++ b/include/linux/kgdb.h
@@ -16,6 +16,7 @@
#include <linux/linkage.h>
#include <linux/init.h>
#include <linux/atomic.h>
+#include <linux/kprobes.h>
#ifdef CONFIG_HAVE_ARCH_KGDB
#include <asm/kgdb.h>
#endif
@@ -323,6 +324,23 @@ extern int kgdb_nmicallin(int cpu, int trapnr, void *regs, int err_code,
atomic_t *snd_rdy);
extern void gdbstub_exit(int status);

+/*
+ * kgdb and kprobes both use the same (kprobe) blocklist (which makes sense
+ * given they are both typically hooked up to the same trap meaning on most
+ * architectures one cannot be used to debug the other)
+ *
+ * However on architectures where kprobes is not (yet) implemented we permit
+ * breakpoints everywhere rather than blocking everything by default.
+ */
+static inline bool kgdb_within_blocklist(unsigned long addr)
+{
+#ifdef CONFIG_KGDB_HONOUR_BLOCKLIST
+ return within_kprobe_blacklist(addr);
+#else
+ return false;
+#endif
+}
+
extern int kgdb_single_step;
extern atomic_t kgdb_active;
#define in_dbg_master() \
diff --git a/kernel/debug/debug_core.c b/kernel/debug/debug_core.c
index 9e5934780f41..133a361578dc 100644
--- a/kernel/debug/debug_core.c
+++ b/kernel/debug/debug_core.c
@@ -188,6 +188,10 @@ int __weak kgdb_validate_break_address(unsigned long addr)
{
struct kgdb_bkpt tmp;
int err;
+
+ if (kgdb_within_blocklist(addr))
+ return -EINVAL;
+
/* Validate setting the breakpoint and then removing it. If the
* remove fails, the kernel needs to emit a bad message because we
* are deep trouble not being able to put things back the way we
diff --git a/kernel/debug/kdb/kdb_bp.c b/kernel/debug/kdb/kdb_bp.c
index d7ebb2c79cb8..ec4940146612 100644
--- a/kernel/debug/kdb/kdb_bp.c
+++ b/kernel/debug/kdb/kdb_bp.c
@@ -306,6 +306,15 @@ static int kdb_bp(int argc, const char **argv)
if (!template.bp_addr)
return KDB_BADINT;

+ /*
+ * This check is redundant (since the breakpoint machinery should
+ * be doing the same check during kdb_bp_install) but gives the
+ * user immediate feedback.
+ */
+ diag = kgdb_validate_break_address(template.bp_addr);
+ if (diag)
+ return diag;
+
/*
* Find an empty bp structure to allocate
*/
diff --git a/lib/Kconfig.kgdb b/lib/Kconfig.kgdb
index ffa7a76de086..9d0d408f81b1 100644
--- a/lib/Kconfig.kgdb
+++ b/lib/Kconfig.kgdb
@@ -19,6 +19,20 @@ menuconfig KGDB

if KGDB

+config KGDB_HONOUR_BLOCKLIST
+ bool "KGDB: use kprobe blocklist to prohibit unsafe breakpoints"
+ depends on HAVE_KPROBES
+ select KPROBES
+ default y
+ help
+ If set to Y the debug core will use the kprobe blocklist to
+ identify symbols where it is unsafe to set breakpoints.
+ In particular this disallows instrumentation of functions
+ called during debug trap handling and thus makes it very
+ difficult to inadvertently provoke recursive trap handling.
+
+ If unsure, say Y.
+
config KGDB_SERIAL_CONSOLE
tristate "KGDB: use kgdb over the serial console"
select CONSOLE_POLL
--
2.25.4