Re: [x86/uaccess] 5b710f34e1: kernel BUG at mm/usercopy.c:75!

From: Kees Cook
Date: Wed Aug 17 2016 - 17:25:23 EST


On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 9:14 AM, Linus Torvalds
<torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 5:17 AM, kernel test robot
> <xiaolong.ye@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> [ 177.875629] usercopy: kernel memory overwrite attempt detected to 80028f40 (<spans multiple pages>) (512 bytes)
>
> Ugh. This is a bug in the memory access hardening code.
>
> I think it's this:
>
> err = __copy_from_user(&fpu->state.xsave,
> buf_fx, state_size);
>
> where it's copying the xsave area into the kernel buffer. That fpu
> buffer is part of the thread structure:
>
> struct fpu *fpu = &tsk->thread.fpu;
>
> and the thread struct allocation is two pages at 80028000:
>
>> [ 178.037761] task: 80028000 ti: 8002a000 task.ti: 8002a000
>
> So yes, it "crosses" the page from 80028000 to 80029000, but the task
> allocation is fine, at 80028000-8002a000.
>
> The check_heap_object() code is simply buggy. It does seem to try to
> handle this, by handling compound pages:
>
> /* Allow if start and end are inside the same compound page. */
> endpage = virt_to_head_page(end);
> if (likely(endpage == page))
> return NULL;
>
> but compound pages are about the mapping of hugepages, not about
> simple multi-order allocations like the task structure (or slab
> entries).
>
> In other words, it looks like the memory hardening is simply broken
> for any case that doesn't use kmalloc(), but instead just allocates
> non-order-0 pages directly. Which is certainly _rare_, but not unheard
> of.
>
> I'm not sure how to fix it.The low-level page allocator does *not*
> mark orders anywhere.
>
> I suspect we should just get rid of the page-crosser checking, because
> it's unsolvable.

I had forwarded this bug Rik's way since the page-cross checking was
suggested by him. I'm happy to drop it; it was a suggested improvement
that was suspected to be safe (none of the folks testing this ran into
it and we saw no report during its time in -next). I can prepare a
patch if there isn't a better way to detect this kind of allocation.
(FWIW, slab is handled separately.)

-Kees

--
Kees Cook
Nexus Security