Re: [PATCH v2] x86/mm: warn on W+x mappings

[Ard Biesheuvel]

On 12 October 2015 at 17:50, Matt Fleming <matt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Oct, at 05:34:53PM, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
>>
>> On arm64, we only map in all of the UEFI runtime services regions
>> during the time any of these services are being invoked. I think this
>> should be mostly feasible on x86 as well, although it would involve
>> yet another rewrite of the EFI region mapping code, and most likely a
>> long list of quirks for platforms that are not able to deal with it
>> correctly for one reason or the other (but that all come down to: 'if
>> you are not doing it like Windows does it, you must be doing it
>> wrong').
>
> Actually, we use separate page tables for mapping the EFI runtime
> services on x86 right now. These tables are only used when making
> runtime calls, just like on arm64.
>
> So we've got a little bit of isolation right now.
>

Ah ok. I thought that only applied to the duplicate 1:1 mapping, not
to the high mapping.

But that does reduce the attack surface considerably. Combined with
strict w^x once the UEFI 2.5 feature is fully supported, I am a lot
less nervous about RWX EFI runtime regions being used to subvert the
system.

-- 
Ard.
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