[RFC PATCH 0/6] arm64: untag user pointers passed to the kernel

[Andrey Konovalov]

On Fri, Mar 9, 2018 at 3:55 PM, Mark Rutland <mark.rutland at arm.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> [trimming Ccs]
>
> On Fri, Mar 09, 2018 at 03:01:58PM +0100, Andrey Konovalov wrote:
>> arm64 has a feature called Top Byte Ignore, which allows to embed pointer
>> tags into the top byte of each pointer. Userspace programs (such as
>> HWASan, a memory debugging tool [1]) might use this feature and pass
>> tagged user pointers to the kernel through syscalls or other interfaces.
>>
>> This patch makes a few of the kernel interfaces accept tagged user
>> pointers. The kernel is already able to handle user faults with tagged
>> pointers and has the untagged_addr macro, which this patchset reuses.
>>
>> We're not trying to cover all possible ways the kernel accepts user
>> pointers in one patchset, so this one should be considered as a start.
>> It would be nice to learn about the interfaces that I missed though.
>
> There are many ways that user pointers can be passed to the kernel, and
> I'm not sure that it's feasible to catch them all, especially as user
> pointers are often passed in data structures (e.g. iovecs) rather than
> direct syscall arguments.
>
> If we *really* want the kernel to support taking tagged addresses, anything
> with a __user annotation (or cast to something with a __user annotation)
> requires tag removal somewhere in the kernel.
>
> It looks like there are plenty uapi structures and syscalls to look at:
>
> [mark at lakrids:~/src/linux]% git grep __user -- include/uapi | wc -l
> 216
> [mark at lakrids:~/src/linux]% git grep __user | grep SYSCALL_DEFINE | wc -l
> 308
>
> ... in addition to special syscalls like ioctl which multiplex a number
> of operations with different arguments, where the tag stripping would
> have to occur elsewhere (e.g. in particular drivers).
>
> I also wonder if we ever write any of these pointers back to userspace
> memory. If so, we have a nasty ABI problem, since we'll have to marshal
> the original tag along with the pointer, to ensure userspace pointer
> comparisons continue to work.
>
> Thanks,
> Mark.

Hi Mark!

This seems to be similar to what you said in reply to one of the other
patches, replied there.

Thanks!