[PATCH v2 4/5] arm64: mmu: map .text as read-only from the outset

[Ard Biesheuvel]

> On 14 Feb 2017, at 15:57, Mark Rutland <mark.rutland at arm.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Sat, Feb 11, 2017 at 08:23:05PM +0000, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
>> Now that alternatives patching code no longer relies on the primary
>> mapping of .text being writable, we can remove the code that removes
>> the writable permissions post-init time, and map it read-only from
>> the outset.
>> 
>> Reviewed-by: Laura Abbott <labbott at redhat.com>
>> Reviewed-by: Kees Cook <keescook at chromium.org>
>> Signed-off-by: Ard Biesheuvel <ard.biesheuvel at linaro.org>
> 
> This generally looks good.
> 
> One effect of this is that even with rodata=off, external debuggers
> can't install SW breakpoints via the executable mapping.
> 

Interesting. For the sake of my education, could you elaborate on how that works under the hood?

> We might want to allow that to be overridden. e.g. make rodata= an
> early param, and switch the permissions based on that in map_kernel(),
> e.g. have:
> 
>    pgprot_t text_prot = rodata_enabled ? PAGE_KERNEL_ROX
>                        : PAGE_KERNEL_EXEC);
> 
> ... and use that for .text and .init.text by default.
> 
> 

Is there any way we could restrict this privilege to external debuggers? Having trivial 'off' switches for security features makes me feel uneasy (although this is orthogonal to this patch)
>> ---
>> arch/arm64/mm/mmu.c | 5 +----
>> 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 4 deletions(-)
>> 
>> diff --git a/arch/arm64/mm/mmu.c b/arch/arm64/mm/mmu.c
>> index 7ed981c7f4c0..e97f1ce967ec 100644
>> --- a/arch/arm64/mm/mmu.c
>> +++ b/arch/arm64/mm/mmu.c
>> @@ -442,9 +442,6 @@ void mark_rodata_ro(void)
>> {
>>    unsigned long section_size;
>> 
>> -    section_size = (unsigned long)_etext - (unsigned long)_text;
>> -    create_mapping_late(__pa_symbol(_text), (unsigned long)_text,
>> -                section_size, PAGE_KERNEL_ROX);
>>    /*
>>     * mark .rodata as read only. Use __init_begin rather than __end_rodata
>>     * to cover NOTES and EXCEPTION_TABLE.
>> @@ -484,7 +481,7 @@ static void __init map_kernel(pgd_t *pgd)
>> {
>>    static struct vm_struct vmlinux_text, vmlinux_rodata, vmlinux_init, vmlinux_data;
>> 
>> -    map_kernel_segment(pgd, _text, _etext, PAGE_KERNEL_EXEC, &vmlinux_text);
>> +    map_kernel_segment(pgd, _text, _etext, PAGE_KERNEL_ROX, &vmlinux_text);
>>    map_kernel_segment(pgd, __start_rodata, __init_begin, PAGE_KERNEL, &vmlinux_rodata);
>>    map_kernel_segment(pgd, __init_begin, __init_end, PAGE_KERNEL_EXEC,
>>               &vmlinux_init);
>> -- 
>> 2.7.4
>>