cefdca0a86
Userfaultfd can be misued to make it easier to exploit existing use-after-free (and similar) bugs that might otherwise only make a short window or race condition available. By using userfaultfd to stall a kernel thread, a malicious program can keep some state that it wrote, stable for an extended period, which it can then access using an existing exploit. While it doesn't cause the exploit itself, and while it's not the only thing that can stall a kernel thread when accessing a memory location, it's one of the few that never needs privilege. We can add a flag, allowing userfaultfd to be restricted, so that in general it won't be useable by arbitrary user programs, but in environments that require userfaultfd it can be turned back on. Add a global sysctl knob "vm.unprivileged_userfaultfd" to control whether userfaultfd is allowed by unprivileged users. When this is set to zero, only privileged users (root user, or users with the CAP_SYS_PTRACE capability) will be able to use the userfaultfd syscalls. Andrea said: : The only difference between the bpf sysctl and the userfaultfd sysctl : this way is that the bpf sysctl adds the CAP_SYS_ADMIN capability : requirement, while userfaultfd adds the CAP_SYS_PTRACE requirement, : because the userfaultfd monitor is more likely to need CAP_SYS_PTRACE : already if it's doing other kind of tracking on processes runtime, in : addition of userfaultfd. In other words both syscalls works only for : root, when the two sysctl are opt-in set to 1. [dgilbert@redhat.com: changelog additions] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: documentation tweak, per Mike] Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20190319030722.12441-2-peterx@redhat.com Signed-off-by: Peter Xu <peterx@redhat.com> Suggested-by: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com> Suggested-by: Mike Rapoport <rppt@linux.ibm.com> Reviewed-by: Mike Rapoport <rppt@linux.ibm.com> Reviewed-by: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com> Cc: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com> Cc: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com> Cc: Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org> Cc: Maxime Coquelin <maxime.coquelin@redhat.com> Cc: Maya Gokhale <gokhale2@llnl.gov> Cc: Jerome Glisse <jglisse@redhat.com> Cc: Pavel Emelyanov <xemul@virtuozzo.com> Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Cc: Martin Cracauer <cracauer@cons.org> Cc: Denis Plotnikov <dplotnikov@virtuozzo.com> Cc: Marty McFadden <mcfadden8@llnl.gov> Cc: Mike Kravetz <mike.kravetz@oracle.com> Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org> Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de> Cc: "Kirill A . Shutemov" <kirill@shutemov.name> Cc: "Dr . David Alan Gilbert" <dgilbert@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> |
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| Documentation | ||
| LICENSES | ||
| arch | ||
| block | ||
| certs | ||
| crypto | ||
| drivers | ||
| fs | ||
| include | ||
| init | ||
| ipc | ||
| kernel | ||
| lib | ||
| mm | ||
| net | ||
| samples | ||
| scripts | ||
| security | ||
| sound | ||
| tools | ||
| usr | ||
| virt | ||
| .clang-format | ||
| .cocciconfig | ||
| .get_maintainer.ignore | ||
| .gitattributes | ||
| .gitignore | ||
| .mailmap | ||
| COPYING | ||
| CREDITS | ||
| Kbuild | ||
| Kconfig | ||
| MAINTAINERS | ||
| Makefile | ||
| README | ||
README
Linux kernel
============
There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.
In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``. The formatted documentation can also be read online at:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/
There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.
Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.