Re: [PATCH 0/2] mm: fix UAF caused by race between ptdump and vmap pgtable freeing

[Mike Rapoport]

On Mon, Jul 13, 2026 at 12:37:46PM +0100, Will Deacon wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 12, 2026 at 09:46:46AM +0100, Lorenzo Stoakes wrote:
> > On Sun, Jul 12, 2026 at 12:50:08PM +0530, Dev Jain wrote:
> > > Will Deacon had pushed back on a similar approach:
> > > https://lore.kernel.org/all/20250530123527.GA30463@willie-the-truck/
> > >
> > > Although now when I read back that thread, it feels more so like my
> > > incompetency to convince :) because:
> > 
> > No haha not so, I think more like this stuff is fiddly.
> 
> Yup, not disputing that this is hard to get right.
> 
> Conceptually, adding locking purely to deal with a vanishingly rare,
> debug reader does turn my head but I'm _far_ less concerned about it if
> it's done in the core code, as is the case here. x86 needs it and we're
> recently running into related locking issues with the set_memory_*()
> APIs if we want to collapse the page-table on arm64 [1]. If the overhead
> is flagged as an issue, we can see if it's worth generalising the static
> key trick that the second patch reverts but I definitely wouldn't start
> from that position.

I'd say it's worth generalizing the set_memory APIs ;-)

Since it's de-facto machinery for manipulation of the kernel page tables it
makes sense to have a common code for page table walks with hooks to
architectures for checking/setting/clearing protection bits.

Coincidentally, I'm working on a POC that lifts x86's CPA into mm/ with
the intention to later use it on other architectures.

> Will
> 
> [1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-arm-kernel/799181c3-a1a1-4de7-bc6a-576d3282efb0@xxxxxxx/

-- 
Sincerely yours,
Mike.