Thread (55 messages) 55 messages, 11 authors, 2021-10-27

Re: [PATCH 10/20] signal/vm86_32: Properly send SIGSEGV when the vm86 state cannot be saved.

From: "Andy Lutomirski" <luto@kernel.org>
Date: 2021-10-21 23:09:29
Also in: lkml


On Wed, Oct 20, 2021, at 10:43 AM, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
Instead of pretending to send SIGSEGV by calling do_exit(SIGSEGV)
call force_sigsegv(SIGSEGV) to force the process to take a SIGSEGV
and terminate.
Why?  I realize it's more polite, but is this useful enough to justify the need for testing and potential security impacts?
Update handle_signal to return immediately when save_v86_state fails
and kills the process.  Returning immediately without doing anything
except killing the process with SIGSEGV is also what signal_setup_done
does when setup_rt_frame fails.  Plus it is always ok to return
immediately without delivering a signal to a userspace handler when a
fatal signal has killed the current process.
I can mostly understand the individual sentences, but I don't understand what you're getting it.  If a fatal signal has killed the current process and we are guaranteed not to hit the exit-to-usermode path, then, sure, it's safe to return unless we're worried that the core dump code will explode.

But, unless it's fixed elsewhere in your series, force_sigsegv() is itself quite racy, or at least looks racy -- it can race against another thread calling sigaction() and changing the action to something other than SIG_DFL.  So it does not appear to actually reliably kill the caller, especially if exposed to a malicious user program.


quoted hunk ↗ jump to hunk
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <redacted>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
Cc: Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>
Cc: x86@kernel.org
Cc: H Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>
Signed-off-by: "Eric W. Biederman" <redacted>
---
 arch/x86/kernel/signal.c  | 6 +++++-
 arch/x86/kernel/vm86_32.c | 2 +-
 2 files changed, 6 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
diff --git a/arch/x86/kernel/signal.c b/arch/x86/kernel/signal.c
index f4d21e470083..25a230f705c1 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kernel/signal.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kernel/signal.c
@@ -785,8 +785,12 @@ handle_signal(struct ksignal *ksig, struct pt_regs *regs)
 	bool stepping, failed;
 	struct fpu *fpu = &current->thread.fpu;

-	if (v8086_mode(regs))
+	if (v8086_mode(regs)) {
 		save_v86_state((struct kernel_vm86_regs *) regs, VM86_SIGNAL);
+		/* Has save_v86_state failed and killed the process? */
+		if (fatal_signal_pending(current))
+			return;
This might be an ABI break, or at least it could be if anyone cared about vm86.  Imagine this wasn't guarded by if (v8086_mode) and was just if (fatal_signal_pending(current)) return;  Then all the other processing gets skipped if a fatal signal is pending (e.g. from a concurrent kill), which could cause visible oddities in a core dump, I think.  Maybe it's minor.
quoted hunk ↗ jump to hunk
+	}

 	/* Are we from a system call? */
 	if (syscall_get_nr(current, regs) != -1) {
diff --git a/arch/x86/kernel/vm86_32.c b/arch/x86/kernel/vm86_32.c
index 63486da77272..040fd01be8b3 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kernel/vm86_32.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kernel/vm86_32.c
@@ -159,7 +159,7 @@ void save_v86_state(struct kernel_vm86_regs *regs, 
int retval)
 	user_access_end();
 Efault:
 	pr_alert("could not access userspace vm86 info\n");
-	do_exit(SIGSEGV);
+	force_sigsegv(SIGSEGV);
This causes us to run unwitting kernel code with the vm86 garbage still loaded into the relevant architectural areas (see the chunk if save_v86_state that's inside preempt_disable()).  So NAK, especially since the aforementioned race might cause the exit-to-usermode path to actually run with who-knows-what consequences.

If you really want to make this change, please arrange for save_v86_state() to switch out of vm86 mode *before* anything that might fail so that it's guaranteed to at least put the task in a sane state.  And write an explicit test case that tests it.  I could help with the latter if you do the former.

--Andy
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