Re: [RFC][PATCH 1/2] fs proc: make pagemap a privileged interface

[Andrew Morton]

On Mon, 09 Mar 2015 13:43:21 -0700 Dave Hansen <dave@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

> 
> From: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> 
> Physical addresses are sensitive information.  There are
> existing, known exploits that are made easier if physical
> information is available.  Here is one example:
> 
> 	http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~vpk/papers/ret2dir.sec14.pdf
> 
> If you know the physical address of something you also know at
> which kernel virtual address you can find something (modulo
> highmem).  It means that things that keep the kernel from
> accessing user mappings (like SMAP/SMEP) can be worked around
> because the _kernel_ mapping can get used instead.
> 
> But, /proc/$pid/pagemap exposes the physical addresses of all
> pages accessible to userspace.  This works against all of the
> efforts to keep kernel addresses out of places where unprivileged
> apps can find them.
> 
> This patch introduces a "paranoid" option for /proc.  It can be
> enabled like this:
> 
> 	mount -o remount,paranoid /proc
> 
> Or when /proc is mounted initially.  When 'paranoid' mode is
> active, opens to /proc/$pid/pagemap will return -EPERM for users
> without CAP_SYS_RAWIO.  It can be disabled like this:
> 
> 	mount -o remount,notparanoid /proc
> 
> The option is applied to the pid namespace, so an app that wanted
> a separate policy from the rest of the system could get run in
> its own pid namespace.
> 
> I'm not really that stuck on the name.  I'm not opposed to making
> it apply only to pagemap or to giving it a pagemap-specific
> name.

Do we really need to disable pagemap entirely?  What happens if we just
obscure the addresses (ie: zero them)?

> pagemap is also the kind of feature that could be used to escalate
> privileged from root in to the kernel.  It probably needs to be
> protected in the same way that /dev/mem or module loading is in
> cases where the kernel needs to be protected from root, thus the
> choice to use CAP_SYS_RAWIO.

Confused.  If you have root, you can do mount -o notparanoid.
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