mm: page_table_check: Make it dependent on EXCLUSIVE_SYSTEM_RAM
authorRuihan Li <lrh2000@pku.edu.cn>
Mon, 15 May 2023 13:09:57 +0000 (21:09 +0800)
committerGreg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Wed, 14 Jun 2023 09:15:29 +0000 (11:15 +0200)
commit08378f0314ce30aefe9001a9affbf460dcf6047c
treed710aee69127c48aba80d12387482003528a087a
parent3901170529a70462c29798005f2e9b38bab211c5
mm: page_table_check: Make it dependent on EXCLUSIVE_SYSTEM_RAM

commit 81a31a860bb61d54eb688af2568d9332ed9b8942 upstream.

Without EXCLUSIVE_SYSTEM_RAM, users are allowed to map arbitrary
physical memory regions into the userspace via /dev/mem. At the same
time, pages may change their properties (e.g., from anonymous pages to
named pages) while they are still being mapped in the userspace, leading
to "corruption" detected by the page table check.

To avoid these false positives, this patch makes PAGE_TABLE_CHECK
depends on EXCLUSIVE_SYSTEM_RAM. This dependency is understandable
because PAGE_TABLE_CHECK is a hardening technique but /dev/mem without
STRICT_DEVMEM (i.e., !EXCLUSIVE_SYSTEM_RAM) is itself a security
problem.

Even with EXCLUSIVE_SYSTEM_RAM, I/O pages may be still allowed to be
mapped via /dev/mem. However, these pages are always considered as named
pages, so they won't break the logic used in the page table check.

Cc: <stable@vger.kernel.org> # 5.17
Signed-off-by: Ruihan Li <lrh2000@pku.edu.cn>
Acked-by: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Pasha Tatashin <pasha.tatashin@soleen.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20230515130958.32471-4-lrh2000@pku.edu.cn
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Documentation/mm/page_table_check.rst
mm/Kconfig.debug