Re: [PATCH v2] all arches, signal: Move restart_block to struct task_struct

From: Thomas Gleixner
Date: Wed Oct 29 2014 - 14:13:10 EST


On Wed, 29 Oct 2014, Andy Lutomirski wrote:

> If an attacker can cause a controlled kernel stack overflow,
> overwriting the restart block is a very juicy exploit target.
> Moving the restart block to struct task_struct prevents this
> exploit.
>
> Note that there are other fields in thread_info that are also easy
> targets, at least on some architectures.
>
> It's also a decent simplification, since the restart code is more or
> less identical on all architectures.

I think that's the most important change. Moving common stuff into
common code. The side effect of slightly reducing the attack surface
is nice, but as Al pointed out not really the big win here.

Thanks,

tglx
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