elf_set_personality()
Russell King - ARM Linux
linux at arm.linux.org.uk
Mon Feb 27 08:04:53 EST 2012
On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 02:36:12PM +0200, Peter De Schrijver wrote:
> Commit ID 5e143436d04465c937c1a242808a99c46393af3e
> (fix personality flag propagation across an exec) makes a child process
> inherit a number of personality flags from its parent. This includes the
> READ_IMPLIES_EXEC flag.
So, READ_IMPLIES_EXEC will only be leaked if it's already set.
> Unfortunately this causes problems when debugging
> android applications using gdbserver. It appears that gdbserver on android
> has an executable stack. This causes the kernel to set the READ_IMPLIES_EXEC
> flag on the gdbserver process.
Ok.
> So the child android process will also get this flag.
And that means that attempting to mmap() stuff will also get executable
protections in addition.
> As soon as the android tries to mmap a readonly android shmem segment
> (using the ashmem driver), ashmem will return EPERM, because the segment has
> been exposed as readonly without exec permissions and the kernel will modify
> any readonly mmap request into read and execute.
This sounds like a problem. If you have two applications trying to use
the ashmem driver, one without READ_IMPLIES_EXEC and one with
READ_IMPLIES_EXEC, then it seems that ashmem will prevent the
READ_IMPLIES_EXEC one from using such regions. That sounds like a
(different) bug to me.
> Why does the READ_IMPLIES_EXEC flag need to be propagated? Would it be
> acceptable to not propagate it to child processes?
It shouldn't propagate. But I think it's uncovered a separate problem
in the ashmem driver.
More information about the linux-arm-kernel
mailing list