Re: [kernel-hardening] [PATCH v5 04/10] arm64: Add __flush_tlb_one()

[Juerg Haefliger <juerg.haefliger@canonical.com>]

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On 08/30/2017 06:47 PM, Tycho Andersen wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 30, 2017 at 07:31:25AM +0200, Juerg Haefliger wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 08/23/2017 07:04 PM, Mark Rutland wrote:
>>> On Wed, Aug 23, 2017 at 10:58:42AM -0600, Tycho Andersen wrote:
>>>> Hi Mark,
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Aug 14, 2017 at 05:50:47PM +0100, Mark Rutland wrote:
>>>>> That said, is there any reason not to use flush_tlb_kernel_range()
>>>>> directly?
>>>>
>>>> So it turns out that there is a difference between __flush_tlb_one() and
>>>> flush_tlb_kernel_range() on x86: flush_tlb_kernel_range() flushes all the TLBs
>>>> via on_each_cpu(), where as __flush_tlb_one() only flushes the local TLB (which
>>>> I think is enough here).
>>>
>>> That sounds suspicious; I don't think that __flush_tlb_one() is
>>> sufficient.
>>>
>>> If you only do local TLB maintenance, then the page is left accessible
>>> to other CPUs via the (stale) kernel mappings. i.e. the page isn't
>>> exclusively mapped by userspace.
>>
>> We flush all CPUs to get rid of stale entries when a new page is
>> allocated to userspace that was previously allocated to the kernel.
>> Is that the scenario you were thinking of?
> 
> I think there are two cases, the one you describe above, where the
> pages are first allocated, and a second one, where e.g. the pages are
> mapped into the kernel because of DMA or whatever. In the case you
> describe above, I think we're doing the right thing (which is why my
> test worked correctly, because it tested this case).
> 
> In the second case, when the pages are unmapped (i.e. the kernel is
> done doing DMA), do we need to flush the other CPUs TLBs? I think the
> current code is not quite correct, because if multiple tasks (CPUs)
> map the pages, only the TLB of the last one is flushed when the
> mapping is cleared, because the tlb is only flushed when ->mapcount
> drops to zero, leaving stale entries in the other TLBs. It's not clear
> to me what to do about this case.

For this to happen, multiple CPUs need to have the same userspace page
mapped at the same time. Is this a valid scenario?

...Juerg


> Thoughts?
> 
> Tycho
> 
>> ...Juerg
>>
>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Mark.
>>>
>>
> 
> 
> 


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