On Feb 22, 2019, at 2:17 PM, Jann Horn [off-list ref] wrote:

On Fri, Feb 22, 2019 at 11:08 PM Nadav Amit [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

quoted

On Feb 22, 2019, at 1:43 PM, Jann Horn [off-list ref] wrote:

(adding some people from the text_poke series to the thread, removing stable@)

On Fri, Feb 22, 2019 at 8:55 PM Andy Lutomirski [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

quoted

On Feb 22, 2019, at 11:34 AM, Alexei Starovoitov [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

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

quoted

On Fri, Feb 22, 2019 at 09:43:14AM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:

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.

If so, the uapi is wrong: a long-sized number does not reliably identify an address if you don’t separately know whether it’s a user or kernel address. s390x and 4G:4G x86_32 are the notable exceptions. I have lobbied for RISC-V and future x86_64 to join the crowd.  I don’t know whether I’ll win this fight, but the uapi will probably have to change for at least s390x.

What to do about existing scripts is a different question.

This lack of logical separation between user and kernel addresses
might interact interestingly with the text_poke series, specifically
"[PATCH v3 05/20] x86/alternative: Initialize temporary mm for
patching" (https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flore.kernel.org%2Flkml%2F20190221234451.17632-6-rick.p.edgecombe%40intel.com%2F&data=02%7C01%7Cnamit%40vmware.com%7Cf2513009ef734ecd6b0d08d69913a5ae%7Cb39138ca3cee4b4aa4d6cd83d9dd62f0%7C0%7C0%7C636864707020821793&sdata=HAbnDcrBne64JyPuVUMKmM7nQk67F%2BFvjuXEn8TmHeo%3D&reserved=0)
and "[PATCH v3 06/20] x86/alternative: Use temporary mm for text
poking" (https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flore.kernel.org%2Flkml%2F20190221234451.17632-7-rick.p.edgecombe%40intel.com%2F&data=02%7C01%7Cnamit%40vmware.com%7Cf2513009ef734ecd6b0d08d69913a5ae%7Cb39138ca3cee4b4aa4d6cd83d9dd62f0%7C0%7C0%7C636864707020821793&sdata=vNRIMKtFDy%2F3z5FlTwDiJY6VGEV%2FMHgQPTdFSFtCo4s%3D&reserved=0),
right? If someone manages to get a tracing BPF program to trigger in a
task that has switched to the patching mm, could they use
bpf_probe_write_user() - which uses probe_kernel_write() after
checking that KERNEL_DS isn't active and that access_ok() passes - to
overwrite kernel text that is mapped writable in the patching mm?

Yes, this is a good point. I guess text_poke() should be defined with
“__kprobes” and open-code memcpy.

Does it sound reasonable?

Doesn't __text_poke() as implemented in the proposed patch use a
couple other kernel functions, too? Like switch_mm_irqs_off() and
pte_clear() (which can be a call into a separate function on paravirt
kernels)?

I will move the pte_clear() to be done after the poking mm was unloaded.
Give me a few minutes to send a sketch of what I think should be done.