Re: [RFC PATCH v11 06/29] KVM: Introduce KVM_SET_USER_MEMORY_REGION2

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 7/29/23 02:03, Sean Christopherson wrote:
> KVM would need to do multiple uaccess reads, but that's not a big
> deal.  Am I missing something, or did past us just get too clever and
> miss the obvious solution?

You would have to introduce struct kvm_userspace_memory_region2 anyway, 
though not a new ioctl, for two reasons:

1) the current size of the struct is part of the userspace API via the 
KVM_SET_USER_MEMORY_REGION #define, so introducing a new struct is the 
easiest way to preserve this

2) the struct can (at least theoretically) enter the ABI of a shared 
library, and such mismatches are really hard to detect and resolve.  So 
it's better to add the padding to a new struct, and keep struct 
kvm_userspace_memory_region backwards-compatible.


As to whether we should introduce a new ioctl: doing so makes 
KVM_SET_USER_MEMORY_REGION's detection of bad flags a bit more robust; 
it's not like we cannot introduce new flags at all, of course, but 
having out-of-bounds reads as a side effect of new flags is a bit nasty. 
 Protecting programs from their own bugs gets into diminishing returns 
very quickly, but introducing a new ioctl can make exploits a bit harder 
when struct kvm_userspace_memory_region is on the stack and adjacent to 
an attacker-controlled location.

Paolo