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arch: Introduce post-init read-only memory
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One of the easiest ways to protect the kernel from attack is to reduce
the internal attack surface exposed when a "write" flaw is available. By
making as much of the kernel read-only as possible, we reduce the
attack surface.

Many things are written to only during __init, and never changed
again. These cannot be made "const" since the compiler will do the wrong
thing (we do actually need to write to them). Instead, move these items
into a memory region that will be made read-only during mark_rodata_ro()
which happens after all kernel __init code has finished.

This introduces __ro_after_init as a way to mark such memory, and adds
some documentation about the existing __read_mostly marking.

This improves the security of the Linux kernel by marking formerly
read-write memory regions as read-only on a fully booted up system.

Based on work by PaX Team and Brad Spengler.

Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <[email protected]>
Cc: Andy Lutomirski <[email protected]>
Cc: Arnd Bergmann <[email protected]>
Cc: Borislav Petkov <[email protected]>
Cc: Brad Spengler <[email protected]>
Cc: Brian Gerst <[email protected]>
Cc: David Brown <[email protected]>
Cc: Denys Vlasenko <[email protected]>
Cc: Emese Revfy <[email protected]>
Cc: H. Peter Anvin <[email protected]>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <[email protected]>
Cc: Mathias Krause <[email protected]>
Cc: Michael Ellerman <[email protected]>
Cc: PaX Team <[email protected]>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <[email protected]>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]
Cc: linux-arch <[email protected]>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/[email protected]
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <[email protected]>
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kees authored and Ingo Molnar committed Feb 22, 2016
1 parent 9ccaf77 commit c74ba8b
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Showing 3 changed files with 18 additions and 0 deletions.
3 changes: 3 additions & 0 deletions arch/parisc/include/asm/cache.h
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -22,6 +22,9 @@

#define __read_mostly __attribute__((__section__(".data..read_mostly")))

/* Read-only memory is marked before mark_rodata_ro() is called. */
#define __ro_after_init __read_mostly

void parisc_cache_init(void); /* initializes cache-flushing */
void disable_sr_hashing_asm(int); /* low level support for above */
void disable_sr_hashing(void); /* turns off space register hashing */
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1 change: 1 addition & 0 deletions include/asm-generic/vmlinux.lds.h
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Expand Up @@ -256,6 +256,7 @@
.rodata : AT(ADDR(.rodata) - LOAD_OFFSET) { \
VMLINUX_SYMBOL(__start_rodata) = .; \
*(.rodata) *(.rodata.*) \
*(.data..ro_after_init) /* Read only after init */ \
*(__vermagic) /* Kernel version magic */ \
. = ALIGN(8); \
VMLINUX_SYMBOL(__start___tracepoints_ptrs) = .; \
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14 changes: 14 additions & 0 deletions include/linux/cache.h
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Expand Up @@ -12,10 +12,24 @@
#define SMP_CACHE_BYTES L1_CACHE_BYTES
#endif

/*
* __read_mostly is used to keep rarely changing variables out of frequently
* updated cachelines. If an architecture doesn't support it, ignore the
* hint.
*/
#ifndef __read_mostly
#define __read_mostly
#endif

/*
* __ro_after_init is used to mark things that are read-only after init (i.e.
* after mark_rodata_ro() has been called). These are effectively read-only,
* but may get written to during init, so can't live in .rodata (via "const").
*/
#ifndef __ro_after_init
#define __ro_after_init __attribute__((__section__(".data..ro_after_init")))
#endif

#ifndef ____cacheline_aligned
#define ____cacheline_aligned __attribute__((__aligned__(SMP_CACHE_BYTES)))
#endif
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