Re: [RFC PATCH 1/2] x86: WARN() when uaccess helpers fault on kernel addresses

From: Ingo Molnar
Date: Tue Aug 07 2018 - 06:03:16 EST



* Andy Lutomirski <luto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> > On Aug 6, 2018, at 6:22 PM, Jann Horn <jannh@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > There have been multiple kernel vulnerabilities that permitted userspace to
> > pass completely unchecked pointers through to userspace accessors:
> >
> > - the waitid() bug - commit 96ca579a1ecc ("waitid(): Add missing
> > access_ok() checks")
> > - the sg/bsg read/write APIs
> > - the infiniband read/write APIs
> >
> > These don't happen all that often, but when they do happen, it is hard to
> > test for them properly; and it is probably also hard to discover them with
> > fuzzing. Even when an unmapped kernel address is supplied to such buggy
> > code, it just returns -EFAULT instead of doing a proper BUG() or at least
> > WARN().
> >
> > This patch attempts to make such misbehaving code a bit more visible by
> > WARN()ing in the pagefault handler code when a userspace accessor causes
> > #PF on a kernel address and the current context isn't whitelisted.
>
> I like this a lot, and, in fact, I once wrote a patch to do something similar. It was before
> the fancy extable code, though, so it was a mess. Here are some thoughts:

Agreed - please move this series beyond the RFC phase.

> - It should be three patches. One patch to add the _UA annotations, one to improve the info
> passes to the handlers, and one to change behavior.
>
> - You should pass the vector, the error code, and the address to the handler.
>
> - The uaccess handler should IMO WARN if the vector is anything other than #PF (which mainly
> means warning if itâs #GP). I think it should pr_emerg() and return false if the vector is
> #PF and the address is too high.
>
> - Arguably most non-uaccess fixups should at least warn for anything other than #GP and #UD.

Ack.

Thanks,

Ingo