diff mbox series

[v5,08/39] x86/mm: Remove _PAGE_DIRTY from kernel RO pages

Message ID 20230119212317.8324-9-rick.p.edgecombe@intel.com (mailing list archive)
State New
Headers show
Series Shadow stacks for userspace | expand

Commit Message

Rick Edgecombe Jan. 19, 2023, 9:22 p.m. UTC 
From: Yu-cheng Yu <yu-cheng.yu@intel.com>

New processors that support Shadow Stack regard Write=0,Dirty=1 PTEs as
shadow stack pages.

In normal cases, it can be helpful to create Write=1 PTEs as also Dirty=1
if HW dirty tracking is not needed, because if the Dirty bit is not already
set the CPU has to set Dirty=1 when the memory gets written to. This
creates additional work for the CPU. So traditional wisdom was to simply
set the Dirty bit whenever you didn't care about it. However, it was never
really very helpful for read-only kernel memory.

When CR4.CET=1 and IA32_S_CET.SH_STK_EN=1, some instructions can write to
such supervisor memory. The kernel does not set IA32_S_CET.SH_STK_EN, so
avoiding kernel Write=0,Dirty=1 memory is not strictly needed for any
functional reason. But having Write=0,Dirty=1 kernel memory doesn't have
any functional benefit either, so to reduce ambiguity between shadow stack
and regular Write=0 pages, remove Dirty=1 from any kernel Write=0 PTEs.

Tested-by: Pengfei Xu <pengfei.xu@intel.com>
Tested-by: John Allen <john.allen@amd.com>
Signed-off-by: Yu-cheng Yu <yu-cheng.yu@intel.com>
Co-developed-by: Rick Edgecombe <rick.p.edgecombe@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Rick Edgecombe <rick.p.edgecombe@intel.com>
Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
Cc: Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
Cc: Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
---

v5:
 - Spelling and grammar in commit log (Boris)

v3:
 - Update commit log (Andrew Cooper, Peterz)

v2:
 - Normalize PTE bit descriptions between patches

 arch/x86/include/asm/pgtable_types.h | 6 +++---
 arch/x86/mm/pat/set_memory.c         | 2 +-
 2 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

Comments

Kees Cook Jan. 20, 2023, 12:52 a.m. UTC | #1 
On Thu, Jan 19, 2023 at 01:22:46PM -0800, Rick Edgecombe wrote:
> From: Yu-cheng Yu <yu-cheng.yu@intel.com>
> 
> New processors that support Shadow Stack regard Write=0,Dirty=1 PTEs as
> shadow stack pages.
> 
> In normal cases, it can be helpful to create Write=1 PTEs as also Dirty=1
> if HW dirty tracking is not needed, because if the Dirty bit is not already
> set the CPU has to set Dirty=1 when the memory gets written to. This
> creates additional work for the CPU. So traditional wisdom was to simply
> set the Dirty bit whenever you didn't care about it. However, it was never
> really very helpful for read-only kernel memory.
> 
> When CR4.CET=1 and IA32_S_CET.SH_STK_EN=1, some instructions can write to
> such supervisor memory. The kernel does not set IA32_S_CET.SH_STK_EN, so
> avoiding kernel Write=0,Dirty=1 memory is not strictly needed for any
> functional reason. But having Write=0,Dirty=1 kernel memory doesn't have
> any functional benefit either, so to reduce ambiguity between shadow stack
> and regular Write=0 pages, remove Dirty=1 from any kernel Write=0 PTEs.
> 
> Tested-by: Pengfei Xu <pengfei.xu@intel.com>
> Tested-by: John Allen <john.allen@amd.com>
> Signed-off-by: Yu-cheng Yu <yu-cheng.yu@intel.com>

Reviewed-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
diff mbox series

Patch

diff --git a/arch/x86/include/asm/pgtable_types.h b/arch/x86/include/asm/pgtable_types.h
index 447d4bee25c4..0646ad00178b 100644
--- a/arch/x86/include/asm/pgtable_types.h
+++ b/arch/x86/include/asm/pgtable_types.h
@@ -192,10 +192,10 @@  enum page_cache_mode {
 #define _KERNPG_TABLE		 (__PP|__RW|   0|___A|   0|___D|   0|   0| _ENC)
 #define _PAGE_TABLE_NOENC	 (__PP|__RW|_USR|___A|   0|___D|   0|   0)
 #define _PAGE_TABLE		 (__PP|__RW|_USR|___A|   0|___D|   0|   0| _ENC)
-#define __PAGE_KERNEL_RO	 (__PP|   0|   0|___A|__NX|___D|   0|___G)
-#define __PAGE_KERNEL_ROX	 (__PP|   0|   0|___A|   0|___D|   0|___G)
+#define __PAGE_KERNEL_RO	 (__PP|   0|   0|___A|__NX|   0|   0|___G)
+#define __PAGE_KERNEL_ROX	 (__PP|   0|   0|___A|   0|   0|   0|___G)
 #define __PAGE_KERNEL_NOCACHE	 (__PP|__RW|   0|___A|__NX|___D|   0|___G| __NC)
-#define __PAGE_KERNEL_VVAR	 (__PP|   0|_USR|___A|__NX|___D|   0|___G)
+#define __PAGE_KERNEL_VVAR	 (__PP|   0|_USR|___A|__NX|   0|   0|___G)
 #define __PAGE_KERNEL_LARGE	 (__PP|__RW|   0|___A|__NX|___D|_PSE|___G)
 #define __PAGE_KERNEL_LARGE_EXEC (__PP|__RW|   0|___A|   0|___D|_PSE|___G)
 #define __PAGE_KERNEL_WP	 (__PP|__RW|   0|___A|__NX|___D|   0|___G| __WP)
diff --git a/arch/x86/mm/pat/set_memory.c b/arch/x86/mm/pat/set_memory.c
index 356758b7d4b4..d41706ad29db 100644
--- a/arch/x86/mm/pat/set_memory.c
+++ b/arch/x86/mm/pat/set_memory.c
@@ -2073,7 +2073,7 @@  int set_memory_nx(unsigned long addr, int numpages)
 
 int set_memory_ro(unsigned long addr, int numpages)
 {
-	return change_page_attr_clear(&addr, numpages, __pgprot(_PAGE_RW), 0);
+	return change_page_attr_clear(&addr, numpages, __pgprot(_PAGE_RW | _PAGE_DIRTY), 0);
 }
 
 int set_memory_rox(unsigned long addr, int numpages)