Re: [PATCH v5] mm: Optional full ASLR for mmap(), mremap(), vdso and stack

From: Topi Miettinen
Date: Mon Nov 30 2020 - 15:28:11 EST


On 30.11.2020 19.57, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
On Sun, Nov 29, 2020 at 1:20 PM Topi Miettinen <toiwoton@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Writing a new value of 3 to /proc/sys/kernel/randomize_va_space
enables full randomization of memory mappings created with mmap(NULL,
...). With 2, the base of the VMA used for such mappings is random,
but the mappings are created in predictable places within the VMA and
in sequential order. With 3, new VMAs are created to fully randomize
the mappings.

Also mremap(..., MREMAP_MAYMOVE) will move the mappings even if not
necessary and the location of stack and vdso are also randomized.

The method is to randomize the new address without considering
VMAs. If the address fails checks because of overlap with the stack
area (or in case of mremap(), overlap with the old mapping), the
operation is retried a few times before falling back to old method.

On 32 bit systems this may cause problems due to increased VM
fragmentation if the address space gets crowded.

On all systems, it will reduce performance and increase memory usage
due to less efficient use of page tables and inability to merge
adjacent VMAs with compatible attributes. In the worst case,
additional page table entries of up to 4 pages are created for each
mapping, so with small mappings there's considerable penalty.

In this example with sysctl.kernel.randomize_va_space = 2, dynamic
loader, libc, anonymous memory reserved with mmap() and locale-archive
are located close to each other:

$ cat /proc/self/maps (only first line for each object shown for brevity)
5acea452d000-5acea452f000 r--p 00000000 fe:0c 1868624 /usr/bin/cat
74f438f90000-74f4394f2000 r--p 00000000 fe:0c 2473999 /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive
74f4394f2000-74f4395f2000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
74f4395f2000-74f439617000 r--p 00000000 fe:0c 2402332 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc-2.31.so
74f4397b3000-74f4397b9000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
74f4397e5000-74f4397e6000 r--p 00000000 fe:0c 2400754 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ld-2.31.so
74f439811000-74f439812000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
7fffdca0d000-7fffdca2e000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 [stack]
7fffdcb49000-7fffdcb4d000 r--p 00000000 00:00 0 [vvar]
7fffdcb4d000-7fffdcb4f000 r-xp 00000000 00:00 0 [vdso]

With sysctl.kernel.randomize_va_space = 3, they are located at
unrelated addresses and the order is random:

$ echo 3 > /proc/sys/kernel/randomize_va_space
$ cat /proc/self/maps (only first line for each object shown for brevity)
3850520000-3850620000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
28cfb4c8000-28cfb4cc000 r--p 00000000 00:00 0 [vvar]
28cfb4cc000-28cfb4ce000 r-xp 00000000 00:00 0 [vdso]
9e74c385000-9e74c387000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
a42e0233000-a42e0234000 r--p 00000000 fe:0c 2400754 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ld-2.31.so
a42e025f000-a42e0260000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
bea40427000-bea4044c000 r--p 00000000 fe:0c 2402332 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc-2.31.so
bea405e8000-bea405ec000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
f6d446fa000-f6d44c5c000 r--p 00000000 fe:0c 2473999 /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive
fcfbf684000-fcfbf6a5000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 [stack]
619aba62d000-619aba62f000 r--p 00000000 fe:0c 1868624 /usr/bin/cat

CC: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
CC: Jann Horn <jannh@xxxxxxxxxx>
CC: Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
CC: Matthew Wilcox <willy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
CC: Mike Rapoport <rppt@xxxxxxxxxx>
CC: Linux API <linux-api@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Topi Miettinen <toiwoton@xxxxxxxxx>
---
v2: also randomize mremap(..., MREMAP_MAYMOVE)
v3: avoid stack area and retry in case of bad random address (Jann
Horn), improve description in kernel.rst (Matthew Wilcox)
v4:
- use /proc/$pid/maps in the example (Mike Rapaport)
- CCs (Andrew Morton)
- only check randomize_va_space == 3
v5: randomize also vdso and stack
---
Documentation/admin-guide/hw-vuln/spectre.rst | 6 ++--
Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/kernel.rst | 20 +++++++++++++
arch/x86/entry/vdso/vma.c | 26 +++++++++++++++-
include/linux/mm.h | 8 +++++
init/Kconfig | 2 +-
mm/mmap.c | 30 +++++++++++++------
mm/mremap.c | 27 +++++++++++++++++
mm/util.c | 6 ++++
8 files changed, 111 insertions(+), 14 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/hw-vuln/spectre.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/hw-vuln/spectre.rst
index e05e581af5cf..9ea250522077 100644
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/hw-vuln/spectre.rst
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/hw-vuln/spectre.rst
@@ -254,7 +254,7 @@ Spectre variant 2
left by the previous process will also be cleared.

User programs should use address space randomization to make attacks
- more difficult (Set /proc/sys/kernel/randomize_va_space = 1 or 2).
+ more difficult (Set /proc/sys/kernel/randomize_va_space = 1, 2 or 3).

3. A virtualized guest attacking the host
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
@@ -499,8 +499,8 @@ Spectre variant 2
more overhead and run slower.

User programs should use address space randomization
- (/proc/sys/kernel/randomize_va_space = 1 or 2) to make attacks more
- difficult.
+ (/proc/sys/kernel/randomize_va_space = 1, 2 or 3) to make attacks
+ more difficult.

3. VM mitigation
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/kernel.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/kernel.rst
index d4b32cc32bb7..806e3b29d2b5 100644
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/kernel.rst
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/kernel.rst
@@ -1060,6 +1060,26 @@ that support this feature.
Systems with ancient and/or broken binaries should be configured
with ``CONFIG_COMPAT_BRK`` enabled, which excludes the heap from process
address space randomization.
+
+3 Additionally enable full randomization of memory mappings created
+ with mmap(NULL, ...). With 2, the base of the VMA used for such
+ mappings is random, but the mappings are created in predictable
+ places within the VMA and in sequential order. With 3, new VMAs
+ are created to fully randomize the mappings.
+
+ Also mremap(..., MREMAP_MAYMOVE) will move the mappings even if
+ not necessary and the location of stack and vdso are also
+ randomized.
+
+ On 32 bit systems this may cause problems due to increased VM
+ fragmentation if the address space gets crowded.
+
+ On all systems, it will reduce performance and increase memory
+ usage due to less efficient use of page tables and inability to
+ merge adjacent VMAs with compatible attributes. In the worst case,
+ additional page table entries of up to 4 pages are created for
+ each mapping, so with small mappings there's considerable penalty.
+
== ===========================================================================


diff --git a/arch/x86/entry/vdso/vma.c b/arch/x86/entry/vdso/vma.c
index 9185cb1d13b9..03ea884822e3 100644
--- a/arch/x86/entry/vdso/vma.c
+++ b/arch/x86/entry/vdso/vma.c
@@ -12,6 +12,7 @@
#include <linux/init.h>
#include <linux/random.h>
#include <linux/elf.h>
+#include <linux/elf-randomize.h>
#include <linux/cpu.h>
#include <linux/ptrace.h>
#include <linux/time_namespace.h>
@@ -32,6 +33,8 @@
const size_t name ## _offset = offset;
#include <asm/vvar.h>

+#define MAX_RANDOM_VDSO_RETRIES 5
+
struct vdso_data *arch_get_vdso_data(void *vvar_page)
{
return (struct vdso_data *)(vvar_page + _vdso_data_offset);
@@ -361,7 +364,28 @@ static unsigned long vdso_addr(unsigned long start, unsigned len)

static int map_vdso_randomized(const struct vdso_image *image)
{
- unsigned long addr = vdso_addr(current->mm->start_stack, image->size-image->sym_vvar_start);
+ unsigned long addr;
+
+ if (randomize_va_space == 3) {
+ /*
+ * Randomize vdso address.
+ */
+ int i = MAX_RANDOM_VDSO_RETRIES;
+
+ do {
+ int ret;
+
+ /* Try a few times to find a free area */
+ addr = arch_mmap_rnd();
+
+ ret = map_vdso(image, addr);
+ if (!IS_ERR_VALUE(ret))
+ return ret;
+ } while (--i >= 0);
+
+ /* Give up and try the less random way */
+ }
+ addr = vdso_addr(current->mm->start_stack, image->size-image->sym_vvar_start);

This is IMO rather ugly. You're picking random numbers and throwing
them at map_vdso(), which throws them at get_unmapped_area(), which
will validate them. And you duplicate the same ugly loop later on.

I agree it's not very pretty, but I'd expect that the first number would already have high probability of getting accepted and the probability of all five attempts failing should be very low. For example, on a system with 16GB of RAM, maximum VM of 32GB (35 bits) and 47 bits of available VM space (since kernel takes one bit), the chances of failure should be 1 - 1 / 2^(47 - 35) or only one out of 4096 first attempts should be expected to fail. Chances of all five failing should be 1 / 2^60.

How about instead pushing this logic into get_unmapped_area()?

The real work seems to be done in unmapped_area() and similar unmapped_area_topdown(), which traverse a RB tree when checking the address. Maybe a more clever algorithm could walk the tree using a random starting address, and when on a branch the address is found invalid (again, not very likely), instead of restarting from top, the search could mutate some bits of the address and continue randomly either sideways or backing up. I'm not sure how randomness properties would be affected by this and how to guarantee that the random walk will always stop eventually. This is not a problem with the proposed simple approach.

-Topi

--Andy