Thread (10 messages) 10 messages, 3 authors, 2024-09-04

Re: [PATCH 0/2] mm: make copy_to_kernel_nofault() not fault on user addresses

From: David Hildenbrand <hidden>
Date: 2024-09-02 08:56:33
Also in: linux-arm-kernel, linux-mips, linux-mm, linux-um, lkml, loongarch

On 02.09.24 08:31, Omar Sandoval wrote:
On Mon, Sep 02, 2024 at 08:19:33AM +0200, Christophe Leroy wrote:
quoted

Le 02/09/2024 à 07:31, Omar Sandoval a écrit :
quoted
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From: Omar Sandoval <redacted>

Hi,

I hit a case where copy_to_kernel_nofault() will fault (lol): if the
destination address is in userspace and x86 Supervisor Mode Access
Prevention is enabled. Patch 2 has the details and the fix. Patch 1
renames a helper function so that its use in patch 2 makes more sense.
If the rename is too intrusive, I can drop it.
The name of the function is "copy_to_kernel". If the destination is a user
address, it is not a copy to kernel but a copy to user and you already have
the function copy_to_user() for that. copy_to_user() properly handles SMAP.
I'm not trying to copy to user. I am (well, KDB is) trying to copy to an
arbitrary address, and I want it to return an error instead of crashing
if the address is not a valid kernel address. As far as I can tell, that
is the whole point of copy_to_kernel_nofault().
The thing is that you (well, KDB) triggers something that would be 
considered a real BUG when triggered from "ordinary" (non-debugging) code.

But now I am confused: "if the destination address is in userspace" does 
not really make sense in the context of KDB, no?

   [15]kdb> mm 0 1234
   [   94.652476] BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 
0000000000000000

Why is address 0 in "user space"? "Which" user space?

Isn't the problem here that KDB lets you blindly write to any 
non-existing memory address?


Likely it should do some proper filtering like we do in fs/proc/kcore.c:

Take a look at the KCORE_RAM case where we make sure the page exists, is 
online and may be accessed. Only then, we trigger a 
copy_from_kernel_nofault(). Note that the KCORE_USER is a corner case 
only for some special thingies on x86 (vsyscall), and can be ignored for 
our case here.

-- 
Cheers,

David / dhildenb

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