Re: [RFC][PATCH] exec: Use init rlimits for setuid exec

[Kees Cook]

On Thu, Jul 6, 2017 at 9:48 PM, Andy Lutomirski <luto@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> How about a much simpler solution: don't read rlimit at all in
> copy_strings(), let alone try to enforce it.  Instead, just before the
> point of no return, check how much stack space is already used and, if
> it's more than an appropriate threshold (e.g. 1/4 of the rlimit),
> abort.  Sure, this adds overhead if we're going to abort, but does
> that really matter?

We should avoid using up tons of memory and then failing. Better to
cap it as we use it. Plumbing a sane value into this shouldn't be hard
at all. Just making this a hardcoded 2MB seems sane (1/4 of 8MB).

> I don't see why using rlimit for layout control makes any sense
> whatsoever.  Is there some historical reason we need that?  As far as
> I can see (on insufficient inspection) is that the kernel is trying to
> guarantee that, if we have so much arg crap that our remaining stack
> is less than 128k, then we don't exceed our limit by a little bit.

IIUC, this is a big deal on 32-bit. Unlimited stack triggers top-down
mmap instead of bottom-up. I mean, I'd be delighted to get rid of
this, but I thought it was relied on by userspace.

-Kees

-- 
Kees Cook
Pixel Security