Re: [PATCH 2/2] x86/ldt: Unmap PTEs for the slow before freeing LDT

[Andy Lutomirski]

On Tue, Oct 23, 2018 at 9:32 AM Kirill A. Shutemov
<kirill.shutemov@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> modify_ldt(2) leaves old LDT mapped after we switch over to the new one.
> Memory for the old LDT gets freed and the pages can be re-used.
>
> Leaving the mapping in place can have security implications. The mapping
> is present in userspace copy of page tables and Meltdown-like attack can
> read these freed and possibly reused pages.

Code looks okay.  But:

> -       /*
> -        * Did we already have the top level entry allocated?  We can't
> -        * use pgd_none() for this because it doens't do anything on
> -        * 4-level page table kernels.
> -        */
> -       pgd = pgd_offset(mm, LDT_BASE_ADDR);

This looks like an unrelated cleanup.  Can it be its own patch?