When operating with shadow stacks enabled, the kernel will automatically
allocate shadow stacks for new threads, however in some cases userspace
will need additional shadow stacks. The main example of this is the
ucontext family of functions, which require userspace allocating and
pivoting to userspace managed stacks.
Unlike most other user memory permissions, shadow stacks need to be
provisioned with special data in order to be useful. They need to be setup
with a restore token so that userspace can pivot to them via the RSTORSSP
instruction. But, the security design of shadow stacks is that they
should not be written to except in limited circumstances. This presents a
problem for userspace, as to how userspace can provision this special
data, without allowing for the shadow stack to be generally writable.
Previously, a new PROT_SHADOW_STACK was attempted, which could be
mprotect()ed from RW permissions after the data was provisioned. This was
found to not be secure enough, as other threads could write to the
shadow stack during the writable window.
The kernel can use a special instruction, WRUSS, to write directly to
userspace shadow stacks. So the solution can be that memory can be mapped
as shadow stack permissions from the beginning (never generally writable
in userspace), and the kernel itself can write the restore token.
First, a new madvise() flag was explored, which could operate on the
PROT_SHADOW_STACK memory. This had a couple of downsides:
1. Extra checks were needed in mprotect() to prevent writable memory from
ever becoming PROT_SHADOW_STACK.
2. Extra checks/vma state were needed in the new madvise() to prevent
restore tokens being written into the middle of pre-used shadow stacks.
It is ideal to prevent restore tokens being added at arbitrary
locations, so the check was to make sure the shadow stack had never been
written to.
3. It stood out from the rest of the madvise flags, as more of direct
action than a hint at future desired behavior.
So rather than repurpose two existing syscalls (mmap, madvise) that don't
quite fit, just implement a new map_shadow_stack syscall to allow
userspace to map and setup new shadow stacks in one step. While ucontext
is the primary motivator, userspace may have other unforeseen reasons to
setup its own shadow stacks using the WRSS instruction. Towards this
provide a flag so that stacks can be optionally setup securely for the
common case of ucontext without enabling WRSS. Or potentially have the
kernel set up the shadow stack in some new way.
The following example demonstrates how to create a new shadow stack with
map_shadow_stack:
void *shstk = map_shadow_stack(addr, stack_size, SHADOW_STACK_SET_TOKEN);
Signed-off-by: Rick Edgecombe <rick.p.edgecombe@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>
Reviewed-by: Borislav Petkov (AMD) <bp@alien8.de>
Reviewed-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Acked-by: Mike Rapoport (IBM) <rppt@kernel.org>
Tested-by: Pengfei Xu <pengfei.xu@intel.com>
Tested-by: John Allen <john.allen@amd.com>
Tested-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20230613001108.3040476-35-rick.p.edgecombe%40intel.com
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