df3735c5b4
Patch series "mm,fork,security: introduce MADV_WIPEONFORK", v4.
If a child process accesses memory that was MADV_WIPEONFORK, it will get
zeroes. The address ranges are still valid, they are just empty.
If a child process accesses memory that was MADV_DONTFORK, it will get a
segmentation fault, since those address ranges are no longer valid in
the child after fork.
Since MADV_DONTFORK also seems to be used to allow very large programs
to fork in systems with strict memory overcommit restrictions, changing
the semantics of MADV_DONTFORK might break existing programs.
The use case is libraries that store or cache information, and want to
know that they need to regenerate it in the child process after fork.
Examples of this would be:
- systemd/pulseaudio API checks (fail after fork) (replacing a getpid
check, which is too slow without a PID cache)
- PKCS#11 API reinitialization check (mandated by specification)
- glibc's upcoming PRNG (reseed after fork)
- OpenSSL PRNG (reseed after fork)
The security benefits of a forking server having a re-inialized PRNG in
every child process are pretty obvious. However, due to libraries
having all kinds of internal state, and programs getting compiled with
many different versions of each library, it is unreasonable to expect
calling programs to re-initialize everything manually after fork.
A further complication is the proliferation of clone flags, programs
bypassing glibc's functions to call clone directly, and programs calling
unshare, causing the glibc pthread_atfork hook to not get called.
It would be better to have the kernel take care of this automatically.
The patchset also adds MADV_KEEPONFORK, to undo the effects of a prior
MADV_WIPEONFORK.
This is similar to the OpenBSD minherit syscall with MAP_INHERIT_ZERO:
https://man.openbsd.org/minherit.2
This patch (of 2):
MPX only seems to be available on 64 bit CPUs, starting with Skylake and
Goldmont. Move VM_MPX into the 64 bit only portion of vma->vm_flags, in
order to free up a VMA flag.
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20170811212829.29186-2-riel@redhat.com
Signed-off-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@intel.com>
Cc: Mike Kravetz <mike.kravetz@oracle.com>
Cc: Florian Weimer <fweimer@redhat.com>
Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Cc: Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>
Cc: Will Drewry <wad@chromium.org>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
Cc: "Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill@shutemov.name>
Cc: Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>
Cc: Colm MacCártaigh <colm@allcosts.net>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Linux kernel ============ This file was moved to Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst Please notice that there are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or ``make pdfdocs``. There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory, several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation. See Documentation/00-INDEX for a list of what is contained in each file. Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.