Re: [LSF/MM/BPF TOPIC] eBPF isolation with pkeys

[James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com>]

On Fri, 2026-02-13 at 13:37 -0800, Alexei Starovoitov wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 13, 2026 at 2:10 AM Yeoreum Yun <yeoreum.yun@arm.com>
> wrote:
> > 
> > Hi Alexei,
> > 
> > > On Thu, Feb 12, 2026 at 10:03 AM Yeoreum Yun
> > > <yeoreum.yun@arm.com> wrote:
[...]
> > > > That is correct — this is a verifier bug.
> > > > However, the concern is that such a bug can lead to a security
> > > > incident. Not only root, but also users with CAP_BPF who are
> > > > allowed to load eBPF programs could potentially trigger
> > > > additional security issues through such bugs.
> > > 
> > > Again. They are not security issues. cap_bpf is effectively root.
> > > Just like cap_perfmon in tracing space is a root.
> > 
> > The argument is not about whether the verifier bug is a security
> > issue per se.  The point is that relying solely on privilege
> > boundaries (e.g., root-only loading) does not eliminate the impact
> > of a verifier bug. Therefore, leveraging hardware isolation to
> > further constrain the blast radius is a defense-in-depth measure.
> 
> I hate the reasoning that bpf somehow needs this hw feature.
> It's not. Look for other use cases for pkey.

That's a bit of a short sighted attitude and also you're looking at it
in the wrong way: hardware, correctly designed, should always be
looking at ways to help software.  eBPF may not "need" this in the same
way qemu doesn't need the VMX accelerations ... it's just more secure
and efficient when they're in use.  After all, if the kernel had said
"no" to VMX in 2006, KVM would never have existed, we'd have been stuck
with Xen paravirt and VMware would be laughing all the way to the bank.
So why not at least discuss whether this could prove useful?  I have my
own doubts about the complexity vs security tradeoffs of protection
keys but if it can actually prove useful, sticking your head in the
sand and ignoring it now would be a disservice to your users (and a
possible gift to Windows or MacOS).

Regards,

James