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* [PATCH] x86/dumpstack: Fix misleading instruction pointer error message
@ 2020-09-25 19:31 Mark Mossberg
  2020-09-25 20:01 ` Borislav Petkov
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 2+ messages in thread
From: Mark Mossberg @ 2020-09-25 19:31 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tglx, mingo, bp, x86, linux-kernel; +Cc: hpa, jannh, Mark Mossberg

Unconditionally printing "Bad RIP value" if copy_code() fails can be
misleading for userspace pointers, since copy_code() can fail if the
instruction pointer is valid, but the code is paged out.  This is
because copy_code() calls copy_from_user_nmi() for userspace pointers,
which disables page fault handling.

This is reproducible in OOM situations, where it's plausible that the
code may be reclaimed in the time between entry into the kernel and when
this message is printed. This leaves a misleading log in dmesg that
suggests instruction pointer corruption has occurred, which may alarm
users.

This patch changes the message printed for userspace pointers to more
accurately reflect the possible reasons why the code cannot be dumped.

Signed-off-by: Mark Mossberg <mark.mossberg@gmail.com>
---
 arch/x86/kernel/dumpstack.c | 5 ++++-
 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/arch/x86/kernel/dumpstack.c b/arch/x86/kernel/dumpstack.c
index 48ce44576947..37dbf16c7456 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kernel/dumpstack.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kernel/dumpstack.c
@@ -115,7 +115,10 @@ void show_opcodes(struct pt_regs *regs, const char *loglvl)
 	unsigned long prologue = regs->ip - PROLOGUE_SIZE;
 
 	if (copy_code(regs, opcodes, prologue, sizeof(opcodes))) {
-		printk("%sCode: Bad RIP value.\n", loglvl);
+		if (user_mode(regs))
+			printk("%sCode: Bad RIP value or code paged out.\n", loglvl);
+		else
+			printk("%sCode: Bad RIP value.\n", loglvl);
 	} else {
 		printk("%sCode: %" __stringify(PROLOGUE_SIZE) "ph <%02x> %"
 		       __stringify(EPILOGUE_SIZE) "ph\n", loglvl, opcodes,
-- 
2.25.1


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2020-09-25 19:31 [PATCH] x86/dumpstack: Fix misleading instruction pointer error message Mark Mossberg
2020-09-25 20:01 ` Borislav Petkov

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