Subject: Re: [PATCH RESEND 1/4] uaccess: Add user_read_access_begin/end and user_write_access_begin/end

From: Al Viro <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2020 18:50:32 +0100

On Thu, Apr 02, 2020 at 07:03:28PM +0200, Christophe Leroy wrote:

> user_access_begin() grants both read and write.
> 
> This patch adds user_read_access_begin() and user_write_access_begin() but
> it doesn't remove user_access_begin()

Ouch...  So the most generic name is for the rarest case?
 
> > What should we do about that?  Do we prohibit such blocks outside
> > of arch?
> > 
> > What should we do about arm and s390?  There we want a cookie passed
> > from beginning of block to its end; should that be a return value?
> 
> That was the way I implemented it in January, see
> https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/patch/1227926/
> 
> There was some discussion around that and most noticeable was:
> 
> H. Peter (hpa) said about it: "I have *deep* concern with carrying state in
> a "key" variable: it's a direct attack vector for a crowbar attack,
> especially since it is by definition live inside a user access region."

> This patch minimises the change by just adding user_read_access_begin() and
> user_write_access_begin() keeping the same parameters as the existing
> user_access_begin().

Umm...  What about the arm situation?  The same concerns would apply there,
wouldn't they?  Currently we have
static __always_inline unsigned int uaccess_save_and_enable(void)
{
#ifdef CONFIG_CPU_SW_DOMAIN_PAN
        unsigned int old_domain = get_domain();

        /* Set the current domain access to permit user accesses */
        set_domain((old_domain & ~domain_mask(DOMAIN_USER)) |
                   domain_val(DOMAIN_USER, DOMAIN_CLIENT));

        return old_domain;
#else
        return 0;
#endif
}
and
static __always_inline void uaccess_restore(unsigned int flags)
{
#ifdef CONFIG_CPU_SW_DOMAIN_PAN
        /* Restore the user access mask */
        set_domain(flags);
#endif
}

How much do we need nesting on those, anyway?  rmk?