Re: [PATCH v5 1/6] mm/page_idle: Add per-pid idle page tracking using virtual index

[Michal Hocko]

On Tue 13-08-19 17:29:09, Jann Horn wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 13, 2019 at 12:09 PM Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Mon 12-08-19 20:14:38, Jann Horn wrote:
> > > On Wed, Aug 7, 2019 at 7:16 PM Joel Fernandes (Google)
> > > <joel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > > The page_idle tracking feature currently requires looking up the pagemap
> > > > for a process followed by interacting with /sys/kernel/mm/page_idle.
> > > > Looking up PFN from pagemap in Android devices is not supported by
> > > > unprivileged process and requires SYS_ADMIN and gives 0 for the PFN.
> > > >
> > > > This patch adds support to directly interact with page_idle tracking at
> > > > the PID level by introducing a /proc/<pid>/page_idle file.  It follows
> > > > the exact same semantics as the global /sys/kernel/mm/page_idle, but now
> > > > looking up PFN through pagemap is not needed since the interface uses
> > > > virtual frame numbers, and at the same time also does not require
> > > > SYS_ADMIN.
> > > >
> > > > In Android, we are using this for the heap profiler (heapprofd) which
> > > > profiles and pin points code paths which allocates and leaves memory
> > > > idle for long periods of time. This method solves the security issue
> > > > with userspace learning the PFN, and while at it is also shown to yield
> > > > better results than the pagemap lookup, the theory being that the window
> > > > where the address space can change is reduced by eliminating the
> > > > intermediate pagemap look up stage. In virtual address indexing, the
> > > > process's mmap_sem is held for the duration of the access.
> > >
> > > What happens when you use this interface on shared pages, like memory
> > > inherited from the zygote, library file mappings and so on? If two
> > > profilers ran concurrently for two different processes that both map
> > > the same libraries, would they end up messing up each other's data?
> >
> > Yup PageIdle state is shared. That is the page_idle semantic even now
> > IIRC.
> >
> > > Can this be used to observe which library pages other processes are
> > > accessing, even if you don't have access to those processes, as long
> > > as you can map the same libraries? I realize that there are already a
> > > bunch of ways to do that with side channels and such; but if you're
> > > adding an interface that allows this by design, it seems to me like
> > > something that should be gated behind some sort of privilege check.
> >
> > Hmm, you need to be priviledged to get the pfn now and without that you
> > cannot get to any page so the new interface is weakening the rules.
> > Maybe we should limit setting the idle state to processes with the write
> > status. Or do you think that even observing idle status is useful for
> > practical side channel attacks? If yes, is that a problem of the
> > profiler which does potentially dangerous things?
> 
> I suppose read-only access isn't a real problem as long as the
> profiler isn't writing the idle state in a very tight loop... but I
> don't see a usecase where you'd actually want that? As far as I can
> tell, if you can't write the idle state, being able to read it is
> pretty much useless.
> 
> If the profiler only wants to profile process-private memory, then
> that should be implementable in a safe way in principle, I think, but
> since Joel said that they want to profile CoW memory as well, I think
> that's inherently somewhat dangerous.

I cannot really say how useful that would be but I can see that
implementing ownership checks would be really non-trivial for
shared pages. Reducing the interface to exclusive pages would make it
easier as you noted but less helpful.

Besides that the attack vector shouldn't be really much different from
the page cache access, right? So essentially can_do_mincore model.

I guess we want to document that page idle tracking should be used with
care because it potentially opens a side channel opportunity if used
on sensitive data.
-- 
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs