linux/Documentation/x86/x86_64
Alexander Popov afaef01c00 x86/entry: Add STACKLEAK erasing the kernel stack at the end of syscalls
The STACKLEAK feature (initially developed by PaX Team) has the following
benefits:

1. Reduces the information that can be revealed through kernel stack leak
   bugs. The idea of erasing the thread stack at the end of syscalls is
   similar to CONFIG_PAGE_POISONING and memzero_explicit() in kernel
   crypto, which all comply with FDP_RIP.2 (Full Residual Information
   Protection) of the Common Criteria standard.

2. Blocks some uninitialized stack variable attacks (e.g. CVE-2017-17712,
   CVE-2010-2963). That kind of bugs should be killed by improving C
   compilers in future, which might take a long time.

This commit introduces the code filling the used part of the kernel
stack with a poison value before returning to userspace. Full
STACKLEAK feature also contains the gcc plugin which comes in a
separate commit.

The STACKLEAK feature is ported from grsecurity/PaX. More information at:
  https://grsecurity.net/
  https://pax.grsecurity.net/

This code is modified from Brad Spengler/PaX Team's code in the last
public patch of grsecurity/PaX based on our understanding of the code.
Changes or omissions from the original code are ours and don't reflect
the original grsecurity/PaX code.

Performance impact:

Hardware: Intel Core i7-4770, 16 GB RAM

Test #1: building the Linux kernel on a single core
        0.91% slowdown

Test #2: hackbench -s 4096 -l 2000 -g 15 -f 25 -P
        4.2% slowdown

So the STACKLEAK description in Kconfig includes: "The tradeoff is the
performance impact: on a single CPU system kernel compilation sees a 1%
slowdown, other systems and workloads may vary and you are advised to
test this feature on your expected workload before deploying it".

Signed-off-by: Alexander Popov <alex.popov@linux.com>
Acked-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Reviewed-by: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>
Acked-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
2018-09-04 10:35:47 -07:00
..
5level-paging.txt x86/mm: Allow to boot without LA57 if CONFIG_X86_5LEVEL=y 2018-02-16 10:48:49 +01:00
00-INDEX
boot-options.txt Merge branch 'x86-timers-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2018-08-13 18:28:19 -07:00
cpu-hotplug-spec
fake-numa-for-cpusets Documenation: update cgroup's document path 2016-08-03 15:43:58 -06:00
machinecheck x86/Documentation: Fix various typos in Documentation/x86/ files 2016-07-01 10:00:10 +02:00
mm.txt x86/entry: Add STACKLEAK erasing the kernel stack at the end of syscalls 2018-09-04 10:35:47 -07:00
uefi.txt