Re: [PATCH 0/6] Memory Mapping (VMA) protection using PKU - set 1

From: Jeff Xu
Date: Tue May 16 2023 - 18:17:53 EST


On Tue, May 16, 2023 at 1:08 PM Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Mon, May 15, 2023 at 01:05:46PM +0000, jeffxu@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > This patch introduces a new flag, PKEY_ENFORCE_API, to the pkey_alloc()
> > function. When a PKEY is created with this flag, it is enforced that any
> > thread that wants to make changes to the memory mapping (such as mprotect)
> > of the memory must have write access to the PKEY. PKEYs created without
> > this flag will continue to work as they do now, for backwards
> > compatibility.
> >
> > Only PKEY created from user space can have the new flag set, the PKEY
> > allocated by the kernel internally will not have it. In other words,
> > ARCH_DEFAULT_PKEY(0) and execute_only_pkey won’t have this flag set,
> > and continue work as today.
>
> Cool! Yeah, this looks like it could become quite useful. I assume
> V8 folks are on board with this API, etc?
>
> > This set of patch covers mprotect/munmap, I plan to work on other
> > syscalls after this.
>
> Which ones are on your list currently?
>
mprotect/mprotect_pkey/munmap
mmap/mremap
madvice,brk,sbrk

Thanks!
-Jeff Xu

> --
> Kees Cook