Re: [PATCH 1/2 v2] kprobe: Do not use uaccess functions to access kernel memory that can fault

[Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>]

On Fri, 22 Feb 2019 11:27:05 -0800
Alexei Starovoitov <alexei.starovoitov@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 22, 2019 at 09:43:14AM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > 
> > Then we should still probably fix up "__probe_kernel_read()" to not
> > allow user accesses. The easiest way to do that is actually likely to
> > use the "unsafe_get_user()" functions *without* doing a
> > uaccess_begin(), which will mean that modern CPU's will simply fault
> > on a kernel access to user space.  
> 
> On bpf side the bpf_probe_read() helper just calls probe_kernel_read()
> and users pass both user and kernel addresses into it and expect
> that the helper will actually try to read from that address.
> 
> If __probe_kernel_read will suddenly start failing on all user addresses
> it will break the expectations.
> How do we solve it in bpf_probe_read?
> Call probe_kernel_read and if that fails call unsafe_get_user byte-by-byte
> in the loop?
> That's doable, but people already complain that bpf_probe_read() is slow
> and shows up in their perf report.

We're changing kprobes to add a specific flag to say that we want to
differentiate between kernel or user reads. Can this be done with
bpf_probe_read()? If it's showing up in perf report, I doubt a single
check is going to cause an issue. In fact, it may actually help speed
things up as the read will be optimized for either user or kernel
address reading.

-- Steve