Thread (34 messages) 34 messages, 11 authors, 2019-02-28

Re: [PATCH 1/2 v2] kprobe: Do not use uaccess functions to access kernel memory that can fault

From: Alexei Starovoitov <hidden>
Date: 2019-02-22 19:35:04
Also in: bpf, lkml, stable

On Fri, Feb 22, 2019 at 02:30:26PM -0500, Steven Rostedt wrote:
On Fri, 22 Feb 2019 11:27:05 -0800
Alexei Starovoitov [off-list ref] wrote:
quoted
On Fri, Feb 22, 2019 at 09:43:14AM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
quoted
Then we should still probably fix up "__probe_kernel_read()" to not
allow user accesses. The easiest way to do that is actually likely to
use the "unsafe_get_user()" functions *without* doing a
uaccess_begin(), which will mean that modern CPU's will simply fault
on a kernel access to user space.  
On bpf side the bpf_probe_read() helper just calls probe_kernel_read()
and users pass both user and kernel addresses into it and expect
that the helper will actually try to read from that address.

If __probe_kernel_read will suddenly start failing on all user addresses
it will break the expectations.
How do we solve it in bpf_probe_read?
Call probe_kernel_read and if that fails call unsafe_get_user byte-by-byte
in the loop?
That's doable, but people already complain that bpf_probe_read() is slow
and shows up in their perf report.
We're changing kprobes to add a specific flag to say that we want to
differentiate between kernel or user reads. Can this be done with
bpf_probe_read()? If it's showing up in perf report, I doubt a single
so you're saying you will break existing kprobe scripts?
I don't think it's a good idea.
It's not acceptable to break bpf_probe_read uapi.
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