Re: a method to distinguish between syscall-enter/exit-stop

From: "Dmitry V. Levin" <ldv@altlinux.org>
To: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Cc: Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	Will Drewry <wad@chromium.org>, Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>,
	"x86@kernel.org" <x86@kernel.org>,
	"linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org" 
	<linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org>,
	Linux MIPS Mailing List <linux-mips@linux-mips.org>,
	linux-arch <linux-arch@vger.kernel.org>,
	linux-security-module <linux-security-module@vger.kernel.org>,
	Alexei Starovoitov <ast@plumgrid.com>,
	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>,
	Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com>,
	Michael Kerrisk-manpages <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: a method to distinguish between syscall-enter/exit-stop
Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2015 06:04:47 +0300	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20150207030447.GA4930@altlinux.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAGXu5jKHkJcnpbiuYY8BVX0-wOEUDFMx7r8_HJJe2ZDT8p3uvQ@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, Feb 06, 2015 at 05:07:41PM -0800, Kees Cook wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 3:17 PM, Dmitry V. Levin <ldv@altlinux.org> wrote:
> > On Fri, Feb 06, 2015 at 12:07:03PM -0800, Kees Cook wrote:
> >> On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 11:32 AM, Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net> wrote:
> >> > On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 11:23 AM, Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org> wrote:
> > [...]
> >> >> And an unrelated thought:
> >> >>
> >> >> 3) Can't we find some way to fix the inability of a ptracer to
> >> >> distinguish between syscall-enter-stop and syscall-exit-stop?
> >> >
> >> > Couldn't we add PTRACE_O_TRACESYSENTRY and PTRACE_O_TRACESYSEXIT along
> >> > the lines of PTRACE_O_TRACESYSGOOD?
> >>
> >> That might be a nice idea. I haven't written a test to see, but what
> >> does PTRACE_GETEVENTMSG return on syscall-enter/exit-stop?
> >
> > The value returned by PTRACE_GETEVENTMSG is the value set along with the
> > latest PTRACE_EVENT_*.
> > In case of syscall-enter/exit-stop (which is not a PTRACE_EVENT_*),
> > there is no particular value set for PTRACE_GETEVENTMSG.
> 
> Could we define one to help distinguish?

I suppose we could define one, but performing extra PTRACE_GETEVENTMSG
for every syscall-stop may be too expensive.

For example, strace makes about 4.5 syscalls per syscall-stop.
The minimum is 4 syscalls: wait4, PTRACE_GETREGSET, write, and PTRACE_SYSCALL;
processing some syscall-stops may require additional process_vm_readv calls.

That is, forcing strace to make extra PTRACE_GETEVENTMSG per syscall-stop
would result to about 20% more syscalls per syscall-stop, that is a
noticeable cost.

A better alternative is to define an event that wouldn't require this
extra PTRACE_GETEVENTMSG per syscall-stop.  For example, it could be a
PTRACE_EVENT_SYSCALL_ENTRY and/or PTRACE_EVENT_SYSCALL_EXIT.  In practice,
adding just one of these two events would be enough to distinguish two
kinds of syscall-stops.  Adding two events would look less surprising,
though.

If the decision would be to add both events, I'd recommend adding just one
new option to cover both events - there is a room only for 32 different
PTRACE_O_* options.

-- 
ldv