From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.0 (2014-02-07) on aws-us-west-2-korg-lkml-1.web.codeaurora.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-8.8 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_00, HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS,INCLUDES_CR_TRAILER,MAILING_LIST_MULTI, SPF_HELO_NONE,SPF_PASS,URIBL_BLOCKED autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.0 Received: from mail.kernel.org (mail.kernel.org [198.145.29.99]) by smtp.lore.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 10C27C433EF for ; Thu, 23 Sep 2021 23:59:17 +0000 (UTC) Received: from vger.kernel.org (vger.kernel.org [23.128.96.18]) by mail.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E468061241 for ; Thu, 23 Sep 2021 23:59:16 +0000 (UTC) Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S243599AbhIXAAr (ORCPT ); Thu, 23 Sep 2021 20:00:47 -0400 Received: from shells.gnugeneration.com ([66.240.222.126]:37070 "EHLO shells.gnugeneration.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S243594AbhIXAAr (ORCPT ); Thu, 23 Sep 2021 20:00:47 -0400 X-Greylist: delayed 597 seconds by postgrey-1.27 at vger.kernel.org; Thu, 23 Sep 2021 20:00:47 EDT Received: by shells.gnugeneration.com (Postfix, from userid 1000) id E8CF81A56019; Thu, 23 Sep 2021 16:49:17 -0700 (PDT) Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2021 16:49:17 -0700 From: Vito Caputo To: Kees Cook Cc: Thomas Gleixner , Josh Poimboeuf , Vito Caputo , Ingo Molnar , Borislav Petkov , "H. Peter Anvin" , Jens Axboe , Mark Rutland , Peter Zijlstra , Stefan Metzmacher , Andy Lutomirski , Lai Jiangshan , Christian Brauner , Andrew Morton , "Kenta.Tada@sony.com" , Daniel Bristot de Oliveira , Michael =?utf-8?B?V2Vpw58=?= , Anand K Mistry , Alexey Gladkov , Michal Hocko , Helge Deller , Dave Hansen , Andrea Righi , Ohhoon Kwon , Kalesh Singh , YiFei Zhu , "Eric W. Biederman" , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, x86@kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-hardening@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] proc: Disable /proc/$pid/wchan Message-ID: <20210923234917.pqrxwoq7yqnvfpwu@shells.gnugeneration.com> References: <20210923233105.4045080-1-keescook@chromium.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20210923233105.4045080-1-keescook@chromium.org> Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-hardening@vger.kernel.org On Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 04:31:05PM -0700, Kees Cook wrote: > The /proc/$pid/wchan file has been broken by default on x86_64 for 4 > years now[1]. As this remains a potential leak of either kernel > addresses (when symbolization fails) or limited observation of kernel > function progress, just remove the contents for good. > > Unconditionally set the contents to "0" and also mark the wchan > field in /proc/$pid/stat with 0. > > This leaves kernel/sched/fair.c as the only user of get_wchan(). But > again, since this was broken for 4 years, was this profiling logic > actually doing anything useful? > > [1] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20210922001537.4ktg3r2ky3b3r6yp@treble/ > > Cc: Josh Poimboeuf > Cc: Vito Caputo > Signed-off-by: Kees Cook Please don't deliberately break WCHANs wholesale. This is a very useful tool for sysadmins to get a vague sense of where processes are spending time in the kernel on production systems without affecting performance or having to restart things under instrumentation. I don't see how providing the symbol name of a given task's kernel function, especially if shallow near the user->kernel entrypoint, is a worrisome information leak. Just make sure it's not failing open with addresses like my original report documented seems to happen spuriously as-is w/kallsyms. When I worked full-time as a sysadmin WCHAN's were regularly the first thing to look at in `ps -o stat,wchan | grep D` when things were falling over. e.g.: ``` root@shells:/root# ps -o stat,wchan | grep D D io_schedule ``` Furthermore this is a well documented on dead trees and understood *nix/posix system observation technique. Even the POSIX ps(1) man page documents it: https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/ps.html Frankly I'm a bit mortified that I have to write this email. Today I'm hoping to test Josh's patch @ https://lore.kernel.org/all/20210831083625.59554-1-zhengqi.arch@bytedance.com/ Thanks, Vito Caputo