RE: [RFC PATCH v2 2/5] x86/sgx: Require userspace to define enclave pages' protection bits

["Xing, Cedric" <cedric.xing@intel.com>]

> From: Christopherson, Sean J
> Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2019 7:34 AM
> 
> On Tue, Jun 11, 2019 at 05:09:28PM -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> >
> > On Jun 10, 2019, at 3:28 PM, Xing, Cedric <cedric.xing@intel.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > >> From: Andy Lutomirski [mailto:luto@kernel.org]
> > >> Sent: Monday, June 10, 2019 12:15 PM This seems like an odd
> > >> workflow.  Shouldn't the #PF return back to untrusted userspace so
> > >> that the untrusted user code can make its own decision as to
> > >> whether it wants to EAUG a page there as opposed to, say, killing
> > >> the enclave or waiting to keep resource usage under control?
> > >
> > > This may seem odd to some at the first glance. But if you can think
> > > of how static heap (pre-allocated by EADD before EINIT) works, the
> > > load parses the "metadata" coming with the enclave to decide the
> > > address/size of the heap, EADDs it, and calls it done. In the case
> > > of "dynamic" heap (allocated dynamically by EAUG after EINIT), the
> > > same thing applies - the loader determines the range of the heap,
> > > tells the SGX module about it, and calls it done. Everything else is
> the between the enclave and the SGX module.
> > >
> > > In practice, untrusted code usually doesn't know much about
> > > enclaves, just like it doesn't know much about the shared objects
> > > loaded into its address space either. Without the necessary
> > > knowledge, untrusted code usually just does what it is told (via
> > > o-calls, or return value from e-calls), without judging that's right
> or wrong.
> > >
> > > When it comes to #PF like what I described, of course a signal could
> > > be sent to the untrusted code but what would it do then? Usually
> > > it'd just come back asking for a page at the fault address. So we
> > > figured it'd be more efficient to just have the kernel EAUG at #PF.
> > >
> > > Please don't get me wrong though, as I'm not dictating what the s/w
> > > flow shall be. It's just going to be a choice offered to user mode.
> > > And that choice was planned to be offered via mprotect() - i.e. a
> > > writable vma causes kernel to EAUG while a non-writable vma will
> > > result in a signal (then the user mode could decide whether to
> > > EAUG). The key point is flexibility - as we want to allow all
> > > reasonable s/w flows instead of dictating one over others. We had
> similar discussions on vDSO API before.
> > > And I think you accepted my approach because of its flexibility. Am
> > > I right?
> >
> > As long as user code can turn this off, I have no real objection. But
> > it might make sense to have it be more explicit — have an ioctl set up
> > a range as “EAUG-on-demand”.
> 
> This was part of the motivation behind changing SGX_IOC_ENCLAVE_ADD_PAGE
> to SGX_IOC_ENCLAVE_ADD_REGION and adding a @flags parameter.  E.g.
> adding support for "EAUG-on-demand" regions would just be a new flag.

We'll end up in some sort of interface eventually. But that's too early to discuss.

Currently what we need is the plumbing - i.e. the range has to be mmap()'ed and it cannot be PROT_NONE, otherwise vm_ops->fault() will not be reached.

> 
> > But this is all currently irrelevant. We can argue about it when the
> > patches show up. :)