On Sat, Feb 18, 2023 at 01:14:17PM -0800, Rick Edgecombe wrote:

The x86 Control-flow Enforcement Technology (CET) feature includes a new
type of memory called shadow stack. This shadow stack memory has some
unusual properties, which require some core mm changes to function
properly.

One of the properties is that the shadow stack pointer (SSP), which is a
CPU register that points to the shadow stack like the stack pointer points
to the stack, can't be pointing outside of the 32 bit address space when
the CPU is executing in 32 bit mode. It is desirable to prevent executing
in 32 bit mode when shadow stack is enabled because the kernel can't easily
support 32 bit signals.

On x86 it is possible to transition to 32 bit mode without any special
interaction with the kernel, by doing a "far call" to a 32 bit segment.
So the shadow stack implementation can use this address space behavior
as a feature, by enforcing that shadow stack memory is always crated
outside of the 32 bit address space. This way userspace will trigger a
general protection fault which will in turn trigger a segfault if it
tries to transition to 32 bit mode with shadow stack enabled.

This provides a clean error generating border for the user if they try
attempt to do 32 bit mode shadow stack, rather than leave the kernel in a
half working state for userspace to be surprised by.

So to allow future shadow stack enabling patches to map shadow stacks
out of the 32 bit address space, introduce MAP_ABOVE4G. The behavior
is pretty much like MAP_32BIT, except that it has the opposite address
range. The are a few differences though.

If both MAP_32BIT and MAP_ABOVE4G are provided, the kernel will use the
MAP_ABOVE4G behavior. Like MAP_32BIT, MAP_ABOVE4G is ignored in a 32 bit
syscall.

Should the interface refuse to accept both set instead?

Reviewed-by: Kees Cook <redacted>

-- 
Kees Cook