[PATCH V2] mm: Allow userland to request that the kernel clear memory on release

[Matthew Garrett]

From: Matthew Garrett <mjg59@xxxxxxxxxx>

Applications that hold secrets and wish to avoid them leaking can use
mlock() to prevent the page from being pushed out to swap and
MADV_DONTDUMP to prevent it from being included in core dumps. Applications
can also use atexit() handlers to overwrite secrets on application exit.
However, if an attacker can reboot the system into another OS, they can
dump the contents of RAM and extract secrets. We can avoid this by setting
CONFIG_RESET_ATTACK_MITIGATION on UEFI systems in order to request that the
firmware wipe the contents of RAM before booting another OS, but this means
rebooting takes a *long* time - the expected behaviour is for a clean
shutdown to remove the request after scrubbing secrets from RAM in order to
avoid this.

Unfortunately, if an application exits uncleanly, its secrets may still be
present in RAM. This can't be easily fixed in userland (eg, if the OOM
killer decides to kill a process holding secrets, we're not going to be able
to avoid that), so this patch adds a new flag to madvise() to allow userland
to request that the kernel clear the covered pages whenever the page
reference count hits zero. Since vm_flags is already full on 32-bit, it
will only work on 64-bit systems.

Signed-off-by: Matthew Garrett <mjg59@xxxxxxxxxx>
---

Modified to wipe when the VMA is released rather than on page freeing

 include/linux/mm.h                     |  6 ++++++
 include/uapi/asm-generic/mman-common.h |  2 ++
 mm/madvise.c                           | 21 +++++++++++++++++++++
 mm/memory.c                            |  3 +++
 4 files changed, 32 insertions(+)

diff --git a/include/linux/mm.h b/include/linux/mm.h
index 6b10c21630f5..64bdab679275 100644
--- a/include/linux/mm.h
+++ b/include/linux/mm.h
@@ -257,6 +257,8 @@ extern unsigned int kobjsize(const void *objp);
 #define VM_HIGH_ARCH_2	BIT(VM_HIGH_ARCH_BIT_2)
 #define VM_HIGH_ARCH_3	BIT(VM_HIGH_ARCH_BIT_3)
 #define VM_HIGH_ARCH_4	BIT(VM_HIGH_ARCH_BIT_4)
+
+#define VM_WIPEONRELEASE BIT(37)       /* Clear pages when releasing them */
 #endif /* CONFIG_ARCH_USES_HIGH_VMA_FLAGS */
 
 #ifdef CONFIG_ARCH_HAS_PKEYS
@@ -298,6 +300,10 @@ extern unsigned int kobjsize(const void *objp);
 # define VM_GROWSUP	VM_NONE
 #endif
 
+#ifndef VM_WIPEONRELEASE
+# define VM_WIPEONRELEASE VM_NONE
+#endif
+
 /* Bits set in the VMA until the stack is in its final location */
 #define VM_STACK_INCOMPLETE_SETUP	(VM_RAND_READ | VM_SEQ_READ)
 
diff --git a/include/uapi/asm-generic/mman-common.h b/include/uapi/asm-generic/mman-common.h
index abd238d0f7a4..82dfff4a8e3d 100644
--- a/include/uapi/asm-generic/mman-common.h
+++ b/include/uapi/asm-generic/mman-common.h
@@ -64,6 +64,8 @@
 #define MADV_WIPEONFORK 18		/* Zero memory on fork, child only */
 #define MADV_KEEPONFORK 19		/* Undo MADV_WIPEONFORK */
 
+#define MADV_WIPEONRELEASE 20
+#define MADV_DONTWIPEONRELEASE 21
 /* compatibility flags */
 #define MAP_FILE	0
 
diff --git a/mm/madvise.c b/mm/madvise.c
index 21a7881a2db4..989c2fde15cf 100644
--- a/mm/madvise.c
+++ b/mm/madvise.c
@@ -92,6 +92,22 @@ static long madvise_behavior(struct vm_area_struct *vma,
 	case MADV_KEEPONFORK:
 		new_flags &= ~VM_WIPEONFORK;
 		break;
+	case MADV_WIPEONRELEASE:
+		/* MADV_WIPEONRELEASE is only supported on anonymous memory. */
+		if (VM_WIPEONRELEASE == 0 || vma->vm_file ||
+		    vma->vm_flags & VM_SHARED) {
+			error = -EINVAL;
+			goto out;
+		}
+		new_flags |= VM_WIPEONRELEASE;
+		break;
+	case MADV_DONTWIPEONRELEASE:
+		if (VM_WIPEONRELEASE == 0) {
+			error = -EINVAL;
+			goto out;
+		}
+		new_flags &= ~VM_WIPEONRELEASE;
+		break;
 	case MADV_DONTDUMP:
 		new_flags |= VM_DONTDUMP;
 		break;
@@ -727,6 +743,8 @@ madvise_behavior_valid(int behavior)
 	case MADV_DODUMP:
 	case MADV_WIPEONFORK:
 	case MADV_KEEPONFORK:
+	case MADV_WIPEONRELEASE:
+	case MADV_DONTWIPEONRELEASE:
 #ifdef CONFIG_MEMORY_FAILURE
 	case MADV_SOFT_OFFLINE:
 	case MADV_HWPOISON:
@@ -785,6 +803,9 @@ madvise_behavior_valid(int behavior)
  *  MADV_DONTDUMP - the application wants to prevent pages in the given range
  *		from being included in its core dump.
  *  MADV_DODUMP - cancel MADV_DONTDUMP: no longer exclude from core dump.
+ *  MADV_WIPEONRELEASE - clear the contents of the memory after the last
+ *		reference to it has been released
+ *  MADV_DONTWIPEONRELEASE - cancel MADV_WIPEONRELEASE
  *
  * return values:
  *  zero    - success
diff --git a/mm/memory.c b/mm/memory.c
index ab650c21bccd..ff78b527660e 100644
--- a/mm/memory.c
+++ b/mm/memory.c
@@ -1091,6 +1091,9 @@ static unsigned long zap_pte_range(struct mmu_gather *tlb,
 			page_remove_rmap(page, false);
 			if (unlikely(page_mapcount(page) < 0))
 				print_bad_pte(vma, addr, ptent, page);
+			if (unlikely(vma->vm_flags & VM_WIPEONRELEASE) &&
+			    page_mapcount(page) == 0)
+				clear_highpage(page);
 			if (unlikely(__tlb_remove_page(tlb, page))) {
 				force_flush = 1;
 				addr += PAGE_SIZE;
-- 
2.21.0.593.g511ec345e18-goog