Re: [PATCH] x86, kasan: add KASAN checks to atomic operations

From: Dmitry Vyukov
Date: Mon Mar 06 2017 - 11:31:17 EST


On Mon, Mar 6, 2017 at 5:20 PM, Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> [roping in Will, since he loves atomics]
>
> On Mon, Mar 06, 2017 at 03:24:23PM +0100, Dmitry Vyukov wrote:
>> On Mon, Mar 6, 2017 at 2:01 PM, Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> > On Mon, Mar 06, 2017 at 01:58:51PM +0100, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
>> >> On Mon, Mar 06, 2017 at 01:50:47PM +0100, Dmitry Vyukov wrote:
>> >> > On Mon, Mar 6, 2017 at 1:42 PM, Dmitry Vyukov <dvyukov@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> >> > > KASAN uses compiler instrumentation to intercept all memory accesses.
>> >> > > But it does not see memory accesses done in assembly code.
>> >> > > One notable user of assembly code is atomic operations. Frequently,
>> >> > > for example, an atomic reference decrement is the last access to an
>> >> > > object and a good candidate for a racy use-after-free.
>> >> > >
>> >> > > Add manual KASAN checks to atomic operations.
>> >> > > Note: we need checks only before asm blocks and don't need them
>> >> > > in atomic functions composed of other atomic functions
>> >> > > (e.g. load-cmpxchg loops).
>> >> >
>> >> > Peter, also pointed me at arch/x86/include/asm/bitops.h. Will add them in v2.
>> >> >
>> >>
>> >> > > static __always_inline void atomic_add(int i, atomic_t *v)
>> >> > > {
>> >> > > + kasan_check_write(v, sizeof(*v));
>> >> > > asm volatile(LOCK_PREFIX "addl %1,%0"
>> >> > > : "+m" (v->counter)
>> >> > > : "ir" (i));
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> So the problem is doing load/stores from asm bits, and GCC
>> >> (traditionally) doesn't try and interpret APP asm bits.
>> >>
>> >> However, could we not write a GCC plugin that does exactly that?
>> >> Something that interprets the APP asm bits and generates these KASAN
>> >> bits that go with it?
>> >
>> > Another suspect is the per-cpu stuff, that's all asm foo as well.
>
> Unfortunately, I think that manual annotation is the only way to handle
> these (as we already do for kernel part of the uaccess sequences), since
> we hide things from the compiler or otherwise trick it into doing what
> we want.
>
>> +x86, Mark
>>
>> Let me provide more context and design alternatives.
>>
>> There are also other archs, at least arm64 for now.
>> There are also other tools. For KTSAN (race detector) we will
>> absolutely need to hook into atomic ops. For KMSAN (uses of unit
>> values) we also need to understand atomic ops at least to some degree.
>> Both of them will require different instrumentation.
>> For KASAN we are also more interested in cases where it's more likely
>> that an object is touched only by an asm, but not by normal memory
>> accesses (otherwise we would report the bug on the normal access,
>> which is fine, this makes atomic ops stand out in my opinion).
>>
>> We could involve compiler (and by compiler I mean clang, because we
>> are not going to touch gcc, any volunteers?).
>
> I don't think there's much you'll be able to do within the compiler,
> assuming you mean to derive this from the asm block inputs and outputs.
>
> Those can hide address-generation (e.g. with per-cpu stuff), which the
> compiler may erroneously be detected as racing.
>
> Those may also take fake inputs (e.g. the sp input to arm64's
> __my_cpu_offset()) which may confuse matters.
>
> Parsing the assembly itself will be *extremely* painful due to the way
> that's set up for run-time patching.
>
>> However, it's unclear if it will be simpler or not. There will
>> definitely will be a problem with uaccess asm blocks. Currently KASAN
>> relies of the fact that it does not see uaccess accesses and the user
>> addresses are considered bad by KASAN. There can also be a problem
>> with offsets/sizes, it's not possible to figure out what exactly an
>> asm block touches, we can only assume that it directly dereferences
>> the passed pointer. However, for example, bitops touch the pointer
>> with offset. Looking at the current x86 impl, we should be able to
>> handle it because the offset is computed outside of asm blocks. But
>> it's unclear if we hit this problem in other places.
>
> As above, I think you'd see more fun for the percpu stuff, since the
> pointer passed into those is "fake", with a percpu pointer accessing
> different addresses dependent on the CPU it is executed on.
>
>> I also see that arm64 bitops are implemented in .S files. And we won't
>> be able to instrument them in compiler.
>> There can also be other problems. Is it possible that some asm blocks
>> accept e.g. physical addresses? KASAN would consider them as bad.
>
> I'm not sure I follow what you mean here.
>
> I can imagine physical addresses being passed into asm statements that
> don't access memory (e.g. for setting up the base registers for page
> tables).
>
>> We could also provide a parallel implementation of atomic ops based on
>> the new compiler builtins (__atomic_load_n and friends):
>> https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/_005f_005fatomic-Builtins.html
>> and enable it under KSAN. The nice thing about it is that it will
>> automatically support arm64 and KMSAN and KTSAN.
>> But it's more work.
>
> These don't permit runtime patching, and there are some differences
> between the C11 and Linux kernel memory models, so at least in the near
> term, I don't imagine we'd be likely to use this.
>
>> Re per-cpu asm. I would say that it's less critical than atomic ops.
>> Static per-cpu slots are not subject to use-after-free. Dynamic slots
>> can be subject to use-after-free and it would be nice to catch bugs
>> there. However, I think we will need to add manual
>> poisoning/unpoisoning of dynamic slots as well.
>>
>> Bottom line:
>> 1. Involving compiler looks quite complex, hard to deploy, and it's
>> unclear if it will actually make things easier.
>> 2. This patch is the simplest short-term option (I am leaning towards
>> adding bitops to this patch and leaving percpu out for now).
>> 3. Providing an implementation of atomic ops based on compiler
>> builtins looks like a nice option for other archs and tools, but is
>> more work. If you consider this as a good solution, we can move
>> straight to this option.
>
> Having *only* seen the assembly snippet at the top of this mail, I can't
> say whether this is the simplest implementation.
>
> However, I do think that annotation of this sort is the only reasonable
> way to handle this.


Here is the whole patch:
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/kasan-dev/3sNHjjb4GCI/X76pwg_tAwAJ