Re: [PATCH] add param that allows bootline control of hardened usercopy

From: Kees Cook
Date: Tue Jun 26 2018 - 12:55:19 EST


On Tue, Jun 26, 2018 at 2:48 AM, Paolo Abeni <pabeni@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Mon, 25 Jun 2018 11:21:38 -0700 Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> On Mon, Jun 25, 2018 at 8:08 AM, Chris von Recklinghausen
>> <crecklin@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> > Enabling HARDENED_USER_COPY causes measurable regressions in the
>> > networking performances, up to 8% under UDP flood.
>>
>> Which function is "hot"? i.e. which copy*user() is taking up the time?
>> Do you have a workload that at can be used to reproduce the problem?
>
> I'm running an a small packet UDP flood using pktgen vs. an host b2b
> connected. On the receiver side the UDP packets are processed by a
> simple user space process that just read and drop them:
>
> https://github.com/netoptimizer/network-testing/blob/master/src/udp_sink.c
>
> Not very useful from a functional PoV, it helps mostly pin-pointing
> bottle-neck in the networking stack.

Cool; thanks for the pointer!

> When running a kernel with CONFIG_HARDENED_USERCOPY=y, I see a 5-8%
> regression in the receive tput, compared to the same kernel without
> such option.
>
> With CONFIG_HARDENED_USERCOPY=y, perf shows ~6% of CPU time spent
> cumulatively in __check_object_size (~4%) and __virt_addr_valid (~2%).

Are you able to see which network functions are making the
__check_object_size() calls?

-Kees

--
Kees Cook
Pixel Security