Subject: Re: [kernel-hardening] [PATCH 09/38] usercopy: Mark kmalloc caches as usercopy caches

From: Kees Cook <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 1 Feb 2020 09:56:41 -0800

On Fri, Jan 31, 2020 at 01:03:40PM +0100, Jann Horn wrote:
> I think dma-kmalloc slabs should be handled the same way as normal
> kmalloc slabs. When a dma-kmalloc allocation is freshly created, it is
> just normal kernel memory - even if it might later be used for DMA -,
> and it should be perfectly fine to copy_from_user() into such
> allocations at that point, and to copy_to_user() out of them at the
> end. If you look at the places where such allocations are created, you
> can see things like kmemdup(), memcpy() and so on - all normal
> operations that shouldn't conceptually be different from usercopy in
> any relevant way.

I can't find where the address limit for dma-kmalloc is implemented.

As to whitelisting all of dma-kmalloc -- I guess I can be talked into
it. It still seems like the memory used for direct hardware
communication shouldn't be exposed to userspace, but it we're dealing
with packet data, etc, then it makes sense not to have to have bounce
buffers, etc.

-- 
Kees Cook