Re: [PATCH V2 16/32] x86/sgx: Support restricting of enclave page permissions

From: Haitao Huang
Date: Thu Mar 10 2022 - 13:33:41 EST


Hi Jarkko

I have some trouble understanding the sequences below.

On Thu, 10 Mar 2022 00:10:48 -0600, Jarkko Sakkinen <jarkko@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Wed, Feb 23, 2022 at 07:21:50PM +0000, Dhanraj, Vijay wrote:
Hi All,

Regarding the recent update of splitting the page permissions change
request into two IOCTLS (RELAX and RESTRICT), can we combine them into
one? That is, revert to how it was done in the v1 version?

Why? Currently in Gramine (a library OS for unmodified applications,
https://gramineproject.io/) with the new proposed change, one needs to
store the page permission for each page or range of pages. And for every
request of `mmap` or `mprotect`, Gramine would have to do a lookup of the
page permissions for the request range and then call the respective IOCTL
either RESTRICT or RELAX. This seems a little overwhelming.

Request: Instead, can we do `MODPE`, call `RESTRICT` IOCTL, and then do
an `EACCEPT` irrespective of RELAX or RESTRICT page permission request?
With this approach, we can avoid storing page permissions and simplify
the implementation.

I understand RESTRICT IOCTL would do a `MODPR` and trigger `ETRACK` flows
to do TLB shootdowns which might not be needed for RELAX IOCTL but I am
not sure what will be the performance impact. Is there any data point to
see the performance impact?

Thanks,
-Vijay

This should get better in the next versuin. "relax" is gone. And for
dynamic EAUG'd pages only VMA and EPCM permissions matter, i.e.
internal vm_max_prot_bits is set to RWX.

I patched the existing series eno

For Enarx I'm using the following patterns.

Shim mmap() handler:
1. Ask host for mmap() syscall.
2. Construct secinfo matching the protection bits.
3. For each page in the address range: EACCEPTCOPY with a
zero page.

For EACCEPTCOPY to work, I believe PTE.RW is required for the target page. So this only works for mmap(..., RW) or mmap(...,RWX).

So that gives you pages with RW/RWX.

To change permissions of any of those pages from RW/RWX to R/RX , you need call ENCLAVE_RESTRICT_PERMISSIONS ioctl with R or with PROT_NONE. you can't just do EMODPE.

so for RW->R, you either:

1)EMODPR(EPCM.NONE)
2)EACCEPT(EPCM.NONE)
3)EMODPE(R) -- not sure this would work as spec says EMODPE requires "Read access permitted by enclave"

or:

1)EMODPR(EPCM.PROT_R)
2)EACCEPT(EPCM.PROT_R)


Shim mprotect() handler:
1. Ask host for mprotect() syscall.
2. For each page in the address range: EACCEPT with PROT_NONE
secinfo and EMODPE with the secinfo having the prot bits.

EACCEPT requires PTE.R. And EAUG'd pages will always initialized with EPCM.RW,
so EACCEPT(EPCM.PROT_NONE) will fail with SGX_PAGE_ATTRIBUTES_MISMATCH.


Backend mprotect() handler:
1. Invoke ENCLAVE_RESTRICT_PERMISSIONS ioctl for the address
range with PROT_NONE.
2. Invoke real mprotect() syscall.

Note #1 can only be done after EACCEPT. MODPR is not allowed for pending pages.

Not super-complicated.

That is the safest way to changes permissions i.e. use EMODPR only to reset
the permissions, and EMODPE as EMODP. Then the page is always either
inaccessible completely or with the correct permissions.

Any other ways to use EMODPR are a bit questionable. That's why I tend to
think that it would be better to kernel provide only limited version of it
to reset the permissions. Most of the other use will be most likely
mis-use. IMHO there is only one legit pattern to use it, i.e. "least
racy" pattern.


I don't see it as "racy" if you copy some data into RW page and reduce it to R.
From kernel point of view the only diff is EMODPR(NONE) vs EMODPR(R).

It's more efficient to do just EMODPR(R) than EMODPR(NONE)+ EMODPE(R).


Thanks
Haitao