Re: [PATCH v5 07/17] arm64: add basic pointer authentication support

[Kees Cook]

On Fri, Oct 19, 2018 at 8:49 AM, Will Deacon <will.deacon@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 19, 2018 at 08:36:45AM -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
>> On Fri, Oct 19, 2018 at 4:24 AM, Will Deacon <will.deacon@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>> > FWIW: I think we should be entertaining a prctl() interface to use a new
>> > key on a per-thread basis. Obviously, this would need to be used with care
>> > (e.g. you'd fork(); use the prctl() and then you'd better not return from
>> > the calling function!).
>> >
>> > Assuming we want this (Kees -- I was under the impression that everything in
>> > Android would end up with the same key otherwise?), then the question is
>> > do we want:
>> >
>> >   - prctl() get/set operations for the key, or
>> >   - prctl() set_random_key operation, or
>> >   - both of the above?
>> >
>> > Part of the answer to that may lie in the requirements of CRIU, where I
>> > strongly suspect they need explicit get/set operations, although these
>> > could be gated on CONFIG_CHECKPOINT_RESTORE=y.
>>
>> Oh CRIU. Yikes. I'd like the get/set to be gated by the CONFIG, yes.
>> No reason to allow explicit access to the key (and selected algo) if
>> we don't have to.
>
> Makes sense.
>
>> As for per-thread or not, having a "pick a new key now" prctl() sounds
>> good, but I'd like to have an eye toward having it just be "automatic"
>> on clone().
>
> I thought about that too, but we're out of clone() flags afaict and there's
> no arch hook in there. We could add yet another clone syscall, but yuck (and
> I reckon viro would kill us).
>
> Or are you saying that we could infer the behaviour from the existing set
> of flags?

I mean if it's starting a new thread, it should get a new key
automatically, just like the ssp canary happens in dup_task_struct().

(Or did I miss some context for why that's not possible?)

-Kees

-- 
Kees Cook
Pixel Security