Re: [PATCH] x86/uaccess: Use pointer masking to limit uaccess speculation

From: Andy Lutomirski
Date: Wed Aug 19 2020 - 12:39:43 EST


On Wed, Aug 19, 2020 at 7:50 AM Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> +/*
> + * Sanitize a uaccess pointer such that it becomes NULL if it's not a valid
> + * user pointer. This blocks speculative dereferences of user-controlled
> + * pointers.
> + */
> +#define uaccess_mask_ptr(ptr) \
> + (__typeof__(ptr)) array_index_nospec((__force unsigned long)ptr, user_addr_max())
> +

If I dug through all the macros correctly, this is generating a fairly
complex pile of math to account for the fact that user_addr_max() is
variable and that it's a nasty number.

But I don't think there's any particular need to use the real maximum
user address here. Allowing a mis-speculated user access to a
non-canonical address or to the top guard page of the lower canonical
region is harmless. With current kernels, a sequence like:

if (likely((long)addr > 0) {
masked_addr = addr & 0x7FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUL;
} else {
if (kernel fs) {
masked_addr = addr;
} else {
EFAULT;
}
}

could plausibly be better. But Christoph's series fixes this whole
mess, and I think that this should be:

#define uaccess_mask_ptr(ptr) ((__typeof___(ptr)) (__force unsigned
long)ptr & USER_ADDR_MASK))

where USER_ADDR_MASK is the appropriate value for 32-bit or 64-bit.