Re: [PATCH v9 00/11] x86: PIE support to extend KASLR randomization

[Thomas Garnier]

On Thu, Aug 29, 2019 at 12:55 PM Thomas Garnier <thgarnie@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Aug 6, 2019 at 8:51 AM Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, Aug 06, 2019 at 05:43:47PM +0200, Borislav Petkov wrote:
> > > On Tue, Jul 30, 2019 at 12:12:44PM -0700, Thomas Garnier wrote:
> > > > These patches make some of the changes necessary to build the kernel as
> > > > Position Independent Executable (PIE) on x86_64. Another patchset will
> > > > add the PIE option and larger architecture changes.
> > >
> > > Yeah, about this: do we have a longer writeup about the actual benefits
> > > of all this and why we should take this all? After all, after looking
> > > at the first couple of asm patches, it is posing restrictions to how
> > > we deal with virtual addresses in asm (only RIP-relative addressing in
> > > 64-bit mode, MOVs with 64-bit immediates, etc, for example) and I'm
> > > willing to bet money that some future unrelated change will break PIE
> > > sooner or later.
>
> The goal is being able to extend the range of addresses where the
> kernel can be placed with KASLR. I will look at clarifying that in the
> future.
>
> >
> > Possibly objtool can help here; it should be possible to teach it about
> > these rules, and then it will yell when violated. That should avoid
> > regressions.
> >
>
> I will look into that as well.

Following a discussion with Kees. I will explore objtool in the
follow-up patchset as we still have more elaborate pie changes in the
second set. I like the idea overall and I think it would be great if
it works.