Re: [PATCH] x86/mm+efi: Avoid creating W+X mappings

[Ard Biesheuvel]

On Fri, 23 Sept 2022 at 20:31, Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Sep 23, 2022 at 04:26:58PM +0200, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> > I was basically making the point that we still support i386 without
> > PAE (which is a prerequisite for supporting non-executable mappings),
> > and if we are going to be pedantic about security on this
> > architecture, we should probably make PAE mandatory as well.
>
> My expectation would be that if someone is running modern kernels on i386,
> they're not using PAE. If they care about PAE, I'd expect them to have
> long since moved to x86_64.
>

Not sure I follow. If they care about PAE, they turn it on. Or do you
mean 'if they care about being able to address lots of physical
memory'? Because the *other* reason you might care about PAE is
because it gives you NX support.

But currently, PAE is not even enabled in the i386_defconfig, and
defaults to off. This means people that are unaware of this won't
enable it, and will be running without NX support.

> > If we are ok with the current state, enabling this permission check on
> > i386 makes no sense.
>
> I'd agree. If it's a choice between "spend a lot of time making sure
> this works correctly on i386" and "don't do this at all on i386", I
> would pick the latter. If someone steps up to do the former, then by
> all means take the patches.
>

OK, so it seems we're all in violent agreement here. And if there is
ever a push for enabling security features on 32-bit, we can add this
to the laundry list of things that need to be looked at.