Re: [RFC] arm64: Detecting tagged addresses

[Andrew Murray <andrew.murray@arm.com>]

On Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 06:45:03PM +0100, Catalin Marinas wrote:
> Hi Andrew,
> 
> Cc'ing Luc (sparse maintainer) who's been involved in the past
> discussions around static checking of user pointers:
> 
> https://lore.kernel.org/linux-arm-kernel/20180905190316.a34yycthgbamx2t3@ltop.local/
> 
> So I think the difference here from the previous approach is that we
> explicitly mark functions that cannot take tagged addresses (like
> find_vma()) and identify the callers.

Indeed.


> 
> More comments below:
> 
> On Wed, Jun 19, 2019 at 01:16:20PM +0100, Andrew Murray wrote:
> > The proposed introduction of a relaxed ARM64 ABI [1] will allow tagged memory
> > addresses to be passed through the user-kernel syscall ABI boundary. Tagged
> > memory addresses are those which contain a non-zero top byte (the hardware
> > has always ignored this top byte due to TCR_EL1.TBI0) and may be useful
> > for features such as HWASan.
> > 
> > To permit this relaxation a proposed patchset [2] strips the top byte (tag)
> > from user provided memory addresses prior to use in kernel functions which
> > require untagged addresses (for example comparasion/arithmetic of addresses).
> > The author of this patchset relied on a variety of techniques [2] (such as
> > grep, BUG_ON, sparse etc) to identify as many instances of possible where
> > tags need to be stipped.
> > 
> > To support this effort and to catch future regressions (e.g. in new syscalls
> > or ioctls), I've devised an additional approach for detecting the use of
> > tagged addresses in functions that do not want them. This approach makes
> > use of Smatch [3] and is outlined in this RFC. Due to the ability of Smatch
> > to do flow analysis I believe we can annotate the kernel in fewer places
> > than a similar approach in sparse.
> > 
> > I'm keen for feedback on the likely usefulness of this approach.
> > 
> > We first add some new annotations that are exclusively consumed by Smatch:
> > 
> > --- a/include/linux/compiler_types.h
> > +++ b/include/linux/compiler_types.h
> > @@ -19,6 +19,7 @@
> >  # define __cond_lock(x,c)      ((c) ? ({ __acquire(x); 1; }) : 0)
> >  # define __percpu      __attribute__((noderef, address_space(3)))
> >  # define __rcu         __attribute__((noderef, address_space(4)))
> > +# define __untagged    __attribute__((address_space(5)))
> >  # define __private     __attribute__((noderef))
> >  extern void __chk_user_ptr(const volatile void __user *);
> >  extern void __chk_io_ptr(const volatile void __iomem *);
> [...]
> > --- a/mm/mmap.c
> > +++ b/mm/mmap.c
> > @@ -2224,7 +2224,7 @@ get_unmapped_area(struct file *file, unsigned long addr, unsigned long len,
> >  EXPORT_SYMBOL(get_unmapped_area);
> >  
> >  /* Look up the first VMA which satisfies  addr < vm_end,  NULL if none. */
> > -struct vm_area_struct *find_vma(struct mm_struct *mm, unsigned long addr)
> > +struct vm_area_struct *find_vma(struct mm_struct *mm, unsigned long __untagged addr)
> >  {
> >         struct rb_node *rb_node;
> >         struct vm_area_struct *vma;
> [...]
> > This can be further improved - the problem here is that for a given function,
> > e.g. find_vma we look for callers where *any* of the parameters
> > passed to find_vma are tagged addresses from userspace - i.e. not *just*
> > the annotated parameter. This is also true for find_vma's callers' callers'.
> > This results in the call tree having false positives.
> > 
> > It *is* possible to track parameters (e.g. find_vma arg 1 comes from arg 3 of
> > do_pages_stat_array etc), but this is limited as if functions modify the
> > data then the tracking is stopped (however this can be fixed).
> [...]
> > An example of a false positve is do_mlock. We untag the address and pass that
> > to apply_vma_lock_flags - however we also pass a length - because the length
> > came from userspace and could have the top bits set - it's flagged. However
> > with improved parameter tracking we can remove this false positive and similar.
> 
> Could we track only the conversions from __user * that eventually end up
> as __untagged? (I'm not familiar with smatch, so not sure what it can
> do).

I assume you mean 'that eventually end up as an argument annotated __untagged'?

The warnings smatch currently produce relate to only the conversions you
mention - however further work is needed in smatch to improve the scripts that
retrospectively provide call traces (without false positives).


> We could assume that an unsigned long argument to a syscall is
> default __untagged, unless explicitly marked as __tagged. For example,
> sys_munmap() is allowed to take a tagged address.

I'll give this some further thought.


> 
> > Prior to smatch I attempted a similar approach with sparse - however it seemed
> > necessary to propogate the __untagged annotation in every function up the call tree,
> > and resulted in adding the __untagged annotation to functions that would never
> > get near user provided data. This leads to a littering of __untagged all over the
> > kernel which doesn't seem appealing.
> 
> Indeed. We attempted this last year (see the above thread).
> 
> > Smatch is more capable, however it almost
> > certainly won't pick up 100% of issues due to the difficulity of making flow
> > analysis understand everything a compiler can.
> > 
> > Is it likely to be acceptable to use the __untagged annotation in user-path
> > functions that require untagged addresses across the kernel?
> 
> If it helps with identifying missing untagged_addr() calls, I would say
> yes (as long as we keep them to a minimum).

Thanks for the feedback.

Andrew Murray

> 
> > [1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2019/6/13/534
> > [2] https://patchwork.kernel.org/cover/10989517/
> > [3] http://smatch.sourceforge.net/
> 
> -- 
> Catalin