From: Alexander Popov <alex.popov@linux.com>
To: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>, "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@kernel.org>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>,
Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>,
Joerg Roedel <jroedel@suse.de>,
Maciej Rozycki <macro@orcam.me.uk>,
Muchun Song <songmuchun@bytedance.com>,
Viresh Kumar <viresh.kumar@linaro.org>,
Robin Murphy <robin.murphy@arm.com>,
Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org>,
Lu Baolu <baolu.lu@linux.intel.com>,
Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>,
Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>, Wei Liu <wl@xen.org>,
John Ogness <john.ogness@linutronix.de>,
Andy Shevchenko <andriy.shevchenko@linux.intel.com>,
Alexey Kardashevskiy <aik@ozlabs.ru>,
Christophe Leroy <christophe.leroy@csgroup.eu>,
Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>,
Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>,
Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@arm.com>,
Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org>,
Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>,
Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>,
Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>,
David S Miller <davem@davemloft.net>,
Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>,
kernel-hardening@lists.openwall.com,
linux-hardening@vger.kernel.org, linux-doc@vger.kernel.org,
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, notify@kernel.org,
Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
Dmitry Vyukov <dvyukov@google.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Introduce the pkill_on_warn boot parameter
Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2021 18:05:54 +0300 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <a09c1d4d-1d5b-9092-ae3a-61bc22689dd2@linux.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <YVWAPXSzFNbHz6+U@alley>
On 30.09.2021 12:15, Petr Mladek wrote:
> On Wed 2021-09-29 12:49:24, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
>> On Wed, Sep 29, 2021 at 10:01:33PM +0300, Alexander Popov wrote:
>>> On 29.09.2021 21:58, Alexander Popov wrote:
>>>> Currently, the Linux kernel provides two types of reaction to kernel
>>>> warnings:
>>>> 1. Do nothing (by default),
>>>> 2. Call panic() if panic_on_warn is set. That's a very strong reaction,
>>>> so panic_on_warn is usually disabled on production systems.
>
> Honestly, I am not sure if panic_on_warn() or the new pkill_on_warn()
> work as expected. I wonder who uses it in practice and what is
> the experience.
>
> The problem is that many developers do not know about this behavior.
> They use WARN() when they are lazy to write more useful message or when
> they want to see all the provided details: task, registry, backtrace.
>
> Also it is inconsistent with pr_warn() behavior. Why a single line
> warning would be innocent and full info WARN() cause panic/pkill?
>
> What about pr_err(), pr_crit(), pr_alert(), pr_emerg()? They inform
> about even more serious problems. Why a warning should cause panic/pkill
> while an alert message is just printed?
That's a good question.
I guess various kernel continuous integration (CI) systems have panic_on_warn
enabled.
[Adding Dmitry Vyukov to this discussion]
If we look at the syzbot dashboard [1] with the results of Linux kernel fuzzing,
we see the issues that appear as various kernel crashes and warnings.
We don't see anything from pr_err(), pr_crit(), pr_alert(), pr_emerg(). Maybe
these situations are not considered as kernel bugs that require fixing.
Anyway, from a security point of view, a kernel warning output is interesting
for attackers as an infoleak. The messages printed by pr_err(), pr_crit(),
pr_alert(), pr_emerg() provide less information.
[1]: https://syzkaller.appspot.com/upstream
> It somehow reminds me the saga with %pK. We were not able to teach
> developers to use it correctly for years and ended with hashed
> pointers.
>
> Well, this might be different. Developers might learn this the hard
> way from bug reports. But there will be bug reports only when
> anyone really enables this behavior. They will enable it only
> when it works the right way most of the time.
>
>
>>>> From a safety point of view, the Linux kernel misses a middle way of
>>>> handling kernel warnings:
>>>> - The kernel should stop the activity that provokes a warning,
>>>> - But the kernel should avoid complete denial of service.
>>>>
>>>> From a security point of view, kernel warning messages provide a lot of
>>>> useful information for attackers. Many GNU/Linux distributions allow
>>>> unprivileged users to read the kernel log, so attackers use kernel
>>>> warning infoleak in vulnerability exploits. See the examples:
>>>> https://a13xp0p0v.github.io/2020/02/15/CVE-2019-18683.html
>>>> https://a13xp0p0v.github.io/2021/02/09/CVE-2021-26708.html
>>>>
>>>> Let's introduce the pkill_on_warn boot parameter.
>>>> If this parameter is set, the kernel kills all threads in a process
>>>> that provoked a kernel warning. This behavior is reasonable from a safety
>>>> point of view described above. It is also useful for kernel security
>>>> hardening because the system kills an exploit process that hits a
>>>> kernel warning.
>>>>
>>>> Signed-off-by: Alexander Popov <alex.popov@linux.com>
>>>
>>> This patch was tested using CONFIG_LKDTM.
>>> The kernel kills a process that performs this:
>>> echo WARNING > /sys/kernel/debug/provoke-crash/DIRECT
>>>
>>> If you are fine with this approach, I will prepare a patch adding the
>>> pkill_on_warn sysctl.
>>
>> I suspect that you need a list of kthreads for which you are better
>> off just invoking panic(). RCU's various kthreads, for but one set
>> of examples.
>
> I wonder if kernel could survive killing of any kthread. I have never
> seen a code that would check whether a kthread was killed and
> restart it.
The do_group_exit() function calls do_exit() from kernel/exit.c, which is also
called during a kernel oops. This function cares about a lot of special cases
depending on the current task_struct. Is it fine?
Best regards,
Alexander
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2021-09-30 15:08 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 33+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2021-09-29 18:58 [PATCH] Introduce the pkill_on_warn boot parameter Alexander Popov
2021-09-29 19:01 ` Alexander Popov
2021-09-29 19:49 ` Paul E. McKenney
2021-09-30 9:15 ` Petr Mladek
2021-09-30 15:05 ` Alexander Popov [this message]
2021-10-01 12:23 ` Petr Mladek
2021-09-30 16:59 ` Steven Rostedt
2021-10-01 12:09 ` Petr Mladek
2021-09-30 18:28 ` Kees Cook
2021-10-01 19:59 ` Linus Torvalds
2021-10-02 11:41 ` Alexander Popov
2021-10-02 12:13 ` Steven Rostedt
2021-10-02 16:33 ` Alexander Popov
2021-10-02 16:52 ` Linus Torvalds
2021-10-02 21:05 ` Alexander Popov
2021-10-05 19:48 ` Eric W. Biederman
2021-10-06 14:56 ` Alexander Popov
2021-10-22 17:30 ` Alexander Popov
2022-07-27 16:17 ` Alexey Khoroshilov
2022-07-27 16:30 ` Jann Horn
2022-07-27 16:43 ` Alexey Khoroshilov
2022-07-27 16:42 ` Linus Torvalds
2022-07-27 17:47 ` Alexey Khoroshilov
2021-09-29 23:31 ` Andrew Morton
2021-09-30 18:27 ` Alexander Popov
2021-09-30 18:36 ` Kees Cook
2021-09-29 19:03 ` Dave Hansen
2021-09-29 19:47 ` Peter Zijlstra
2021-09-29 20:06 ` Kees Cook
2021-09-30 13:55 ` Alexander Popov
2021-09-30 18:20 ` Kees Cook
2021-10-02 18:04 ` Al Viro
2021-10-02 18:31 ` Steven Rostedt
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=a09c1d4d-1d5b-9092-ae3a-61bc22689dd2@linux.com \
--to=alex.popov@linux.com \
--cc=aik@ozlabs.ru \
--cc=akpm@linux-foundation.org \
--cc=andriy.shevchenko@linux.intel.com \
--cc=baolu.lu@linux.intel.com \
--cc=bp@alien8.de \
--cc=christophe.leroy@csgroup.eu \
--cc=corbet@lwn.net \
--cc=dave.hansen@linux.intel.com \
--cc=davem@davemloft.net \
--cc=dvyukov@google.com \
--cc=gregkh@linuxfoundation.org \
--cc=jannh@google.com \
--cc=john.ogness@linutronix.de \
--cc=jroedel@suse.de \
--cc=keescook@chromium.org \
--cc=kernel-hardening@lists.openwall.com \
--cc=linux-doc@vger.kernel.org \
--cc=linux-hardening@vger.kernel.org \
--cc=linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org \
--cc=luto@kernel.org \
--cc=macro@orcam.me.uk \
--cc=mark.rutland@arm.com \
--cc=mcgrof@kernel.org \
--cc=notify@kernel.org \
--cc=paulmck@kernel.org \
--cc=peterz@infradead.org \
--cc=pmladek@suse.com \
--cc=rdunlap@infradead.org \
--cc=robin.murphy@arm.com \
--cc=rostedt@goodmis.org \
--cc=songmuchun@bytedance.com \
--cc=tglx@linutronix.de \
--cc=torvalds@linux-foundation.org \
--cc=viresh.kumar@linaro.org \
--cc=will.deacon@arm.com \
--cc=wl@xen.org \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).