[PATCH] arm64/bti: Disable in kernel BTI when cross section thunks are broken

Mark Brown broonie at kernel.org
Fri Sep 2 05:47:24 PDT 2022


GCC does not insert a `bti c` instruction at the beginning of a function
when it believes that all callers reach the function through a direct
branch[1]. Unfortunately the logic it uses to determine this is not
sufficiently robust, for example not taking account of functions being
placed in different sections which may be loaded separately, so we may
still see thunks being generated to these functions. If that happens,
the first instruction in the callee function will result in a Branch
Target Exception due to the missing landing pad.

While this has currently only been observed in the case of modules
having their main code loaded sufficiently far from their init section
to require thunks it could potentially happen for other cases so the
safest thing is to disable BTI for the kernel when building with an
affected toolchain.

[1]: https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=106671

Reported-by: D Scott Phillips <scott at os.amperecomputing.com>
[Bits of the commit message are lifted from his report & workaround]
Signed-off-by: Mark Brown <broonie at kernel.org>
---

I'm sending this as an alternative to Scott's workaround in:

  https://lore.kernel.org/r/20220902001551.2349544-1-scott@os.amperecomputing.com

in case people aren't comfortable with that, given the GCC bug it seems
likely that it is possible to generate some other case where there might
be issues.

 arch/arm64/Kconfig | 4 ++--
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/arch/arm64/Kconfig b/arch/arm64/Kconfig
index 9fb9fff08c94..863b807681ce 100644
--- a/arch/arm64/Kconfig
+++ b/arch/arm64/Kconfig
@@ -1885,8 +1885,8 @@ config ARM64_BTI_KERNEL
 	depends on ARM64_BTI
 	depends on ARM64_PTR_AUTH_KERNEL
 	depends on CC_HAS_BRANCH_PROT_PAC_RET_BTI
-	# https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=94697
-	depends on !CC_IS_GCC || GCC_VERSION >= 100100
+	# https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=106671
+	depends on !CC_IS_GCC
 	# https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/commit/a88c722e687e6780dcd6a58718350dc76fcc4cc9
 	depends on !CC_IS_CLANG || CLANG_VERSION >= 120000
 	depends on (!FUNCTION_GRAPH_TRACER || DYNAMIC_FTRACE_WITH_REGS)
-- 
2.30.2




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