Re: [RFC PATCH v3 12/24] x86/mm: Modify ptep_set_wrprotect and pmdp_set_wrprotect for _PAGE_DIRTY_SW

[Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>]

> On Aug 30, 2018, at 10:19 AM, Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 08/30/2018 09:23 AM, Jann Horn wrote:
>> Three threads (A, B, C) run with the same CR3.
>> 
>> 1. a dirty+writable PTE is placed directly in front of B's shadow stack.
>>   (this can happen, right? or is there a guard page?)
>> 2. C's TLB caches the dirty+writable PTE.
>> 3. A performs some syscall that triggers ptep_set_wrprotect().
>> 4. A's syscall calls clear_bit().
>> 5. B's TLB caches the transient shadow stack.
>> [now C has write access to B's transiently-extended shadow stack]
>> 6. B recurses into the transiently-extended shadow stack
>> 7. C overwrites the transiently-extended shadow stack area.
>> 8. B returns through the transiently-extended shadow stack, giving
>>    the attacker instruction pointer control in B.
>> 9. A's syscall broadcasts a TLB flush.
> 
> Heh, that's a good point.  The shadow stack permissions are *not*
> strictly reduced because a page getting marked as shadow-stack has
> *increased* permissions when being used as a shadow stack.  Fun.
> 
> For general hardening, it seems like we want to ensure that there's a
> guard page at the bottom of the shadow stack.  Yu-cheng, do we have a
> guard page?
> 
> But, to keep B's TLB from picking up the entry, I think we can just make
> it !Present for a moment.  No TLB can cache it, and I believe the same
> "don't set Dirty on a !Writable entry" logic also holds for !Present
> (modulo a weird erratum or two).

Can we get documentation?  Pretty please?