From: Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@gmail.com>
To: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xmission.com>
Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>,
akpm@linux-foundation.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
linux-doc@vger.kernel.org, Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org>,
Bagas Sanjaya <bagasdotme@gmail.com>,
Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>,
linux-mm@kvack.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3] ELF: document some de-facto PT_* ABI quirks
Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2023 14:45:18 +0300 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <57f5aa9d-79c5-4f65-b90f-204600edfb80@p183> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <874jgugilq.fsf@email.froward.int.ebiederm.org>
On Thu, Dec 07, 2023 at 09:03:45AM -0600, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org> writes:
>
> > *thread necromancy* Question below...
> >
> > On Sat, Apr 15, 2023 at 08:37:29PM +0300, Alexey Dobriyan wrote:
> >> Turns out rules about PT_INTERP, PT_GNU_STACK and PT_GNU_PROPERTY
> >> program headers are slightly different.
> >>
> >> Signed-off-by: Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@gmail.com>
> >> ---
> >>
> >> v3: move to Documentation/userspace-api/
> >> v2: integrate into documentation build system
> >>
> >> Documentation/userspace-api/ELF.rst | 34 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> >> Documentation/userspace-api/index.rst | 1 +
> >> 2 files changed, 35 insertions(+)
> >>
> >> new file mode 100644
> >> --- /dev/null
> >> +++ b/Documentation/userspace-api/ELF.rst
> >> @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
> >> +.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
> >> +
> >> +=================================
> >> +Linux-specific ELF idiosyncrasies
> >> +=================================
> >> +
> >> +Definitions
> >> +===========
> >> +
> >> +"First" program header is the one with the smallest offset in the file:
> >> +e_phoff.
>
> Confusing e_phoff is the defined location of the array of program
> headers.
>
> Perhaps the "First" in that array with the lowest e_phnum?
>
> >> +"Last" program header is the one with the biggest offset in the file:
> >> +e_phoff + (e_phnum - 1) * sizeof(Elf_Phdr).
>
> Ditto the "Last" in the array with the largest array index.
>
> I nit pick this because it sounded at first like you were talking about
> p_offset. Which is a value contained in the program header entry.
>
> >> +PT_INTERP
> >> +=========
> >> +
> >> +First PT_INTERP program header is used to locate the filename of ELF
> >> +interpreter. Other PT_INTERP headers are ignored (since Linux 2.4.11).
> >> +
> >> +PT_GNU_STACK
> >> +============
> >> +
> >> +Last PT_GNU_STACK program header defines userspace stack executability
> >> +(since Linux 2.6.6). Other PT_GNU_STACK headers are ignored.
> >> +
> >> +PT_GNU_PROPERTY
> >> +===============
> >> +
> >> +ELF interpreter's last PT_GNU_PROPERTY program header is used (since
> >> +Linux 5.8). If interpreter doesn't have one, then the last PT_GNU_PROPERTY
> >> +program header of an executable is used. Other PT_GNU_PROPERTY headers
> >> +are ignored.
>
> A more interesting property to document is that PT_GNU_PROPERTY must
> precede PT_INTERP in the linux implementation, otherwise we ignore it.
>
> > Should we perhaps solve some of these in some way? What would folks
> > prefer the behaviors be? (I like to have things been "as expected", but
> > it's not very obvious here for redundant headers...)
>
> All of these are really headers that should appear only once.
Yes.
> Quite frankly if we are going to do something with this my sense is that
> we should fail the execve with a clear error code as userspace should
> not be doing this, and accepting a malformed executable will hide
> errors, and perhaps hide someone causing problems.
Maybe do it for PT_GNU_PROPERTY which is relatively new.
> I really don't think having multiple copies of these headers with
> different values is something we should encourage.
>
> It looks like -ELIBBAD is the documented way to fail and report
> a bad file format.
It is obvious you don't know how much will break.
> For PT_GNU_PROPTERTY perhaps we should accept it anywhere, instead of
> silently ignoring it depending upon it's location?
>
> I thinking change the code to talk one pass through the program headers
> to identify the interesting headers, and then with the interesting
> headers all identified we go do something with them.
>
> Anyway just my opinion, but that is what it feels like to me.
_Not_ checking for duplicates will result in the simplest and fastest exec.
which is what current code does.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2023-12-10 11:47 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 15+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2023-03-14 17:02 [PATCH] ELF: document some de-facto PT_* ABI quirks Alexey Dobriyan
2023-03-15 2:34 ` Randy Dunlap
2023-03-17 8:22 ` Bagas Sanjaya
2023-03-17 16:53 ` Alexey Dobriyan
2023-03-19 12:52 ` Bagas Sanjaya
2023-03-26 16:49 ` [PATCH v2] " Alexey Dobriyan
2023-03-26 19:51 ` Randy Dunlap
2023-03-29 16:40 ` Jonathan Corbet
2023-04-15 17:37 ` [PATCH v3] " Alexey Dobriyan
2023-04-20 16:07 ` Jonathan Corbet
2023-12-06 22:58 ` Kees Cook
2023-12-07 15:03 ` Eric W. Biederman
2023-12-10 11:45 ` Alexey Dobriyan [this message]
2023-12-10 22:58 ` Eric W. Biederman
2023-12-11 16:26 ` Alexey Dobriyan
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