Add some documentation of the userspace ABI for Guarded Control Stacks.
Reviewed-by: Thiago Jung Bauermann thiago.bauermann@linaro.org Reviewed-by: Catalin Marinas catalin.marinas@arm.com Acked-by: Yury Khrustalev yury.khrustalev@arm.com Signed-off-by: Mark Brown broonie@kernel.org --- Documentation/arch/arm64/gcs.rst | 230 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Documentation/arch/arm64/index.rst | 1 + 2 files changed, 231 insertions(+)
diff --git a/Documentation/arch/arm64/gcs.rst b/Documentation/arch/arm64/gcs.rst new file mode 100644 index 000000000000..af58d9151cb7 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/arch/arm64/gcs.rst @@ -0,0 +1,230 @@ +=============================================== +Guarded Control Stack support for AArch64 Linux +=============================================== + +This document outlines briefly the interface provided to userspace by Linux in +order to support use of the ARM Guarded Control Stack (GCS) feature. + +This is an outline of the most important features and issues only and not +intended to be exhaustive. + + + +1. General +----------- + +* GCS is an architecture feature intended to provide greater protection + against return oriented programming (ROP) attacks and to simplify the + implementation of features that need to collect stack traces such as + profiling. + +* When GCS is enabled a separate guarded control stack is maintained by the + PE which is writeable only through specific GCS operations. This + stores the call stack only, when a procedure call instruction is + performed the current PC is pushed onto the GCS and on RET the + address in the LR is verified against that on the top of the GCS. + +* When active the current GCS pointer is stored in the system register + GCSPR_EL0. This is readable by userspace but can only be updated + via specific GCS instructions. + +* The architecture provides instructions for switching between guarded + control stacks with checks to ensure that the new stack is a valid + target for switching. + +* The functionality of GCS is similar to that provided by the x86 Shadow + Stack feature, due to sharing of userspace interfaces the ABI refers to + shadow stacks rather than GCS. + +* Support for GCS is reported to userspace via HWCAP_GCS in the aux vector + AT_HWCAP2 entry. + +* GCS is enabled per thread. While there is support for disabling GCS + at runtime this should be done with great care. + +* GCS memory access faults are reported as normal memory access faults. + +* GCS specific errors (those reported with EC 0x2d) will be reported as + SIGSEGV with a si_code of SEGV_CPERR (control protection error). + +* GCS is supported only for AArch64. + +* On systems where GCS is supported GCSPR_EL0 is always readable by EL0 + regardless of the GCS configuration for the thread. + +* The architecture supports enabling GCS without verifying that return values + in LR match those in the GCS, the LR will be ignored. This is not supported + by Linux. + + + +2. Enabling and disabling Guarded Control Stacks +------------------------------------------------- + +* GCS is enabled and disabled for a thread via the PR_SET_SHADOW_STACK_STATUS + prctl(), this takes a single flags argument specifying which GCS features + should be used. + +* When set PR_SHADOW_STACK_ENABLE flag allocates a Guarded Control Stack + and enables GCS for the thread, enabling the functionality controlled by + GCSCRE0_EL1.{nTR, RVCHKEN, PCRSEL}. + +* When set the PR_SHADOW_STACK_PUSH flag enables the functionality controlled + by GCSCRE0_EL1.PUSHMEn, allowing explicit GCS pushes. + +* When set the PR_SHADOW_STACK_WRITE flag enables the functionality controlled + by GCSCRE0_EL1.STREn, allowing explicit stores to the Guarded Control Stack. + +* Any unknown flags will cause PR_SET_SHADOW_STACK_STATUS to return -EINVAL. + +* PR_LOCK_SHADOW_STACK_STATUS is passed a bitmask of features with the same + values as used for PR_SET_SHADOW_STACK_STATUS. Any future changes to the + status of the specified GCS mode bits will be rejected. + +* PR_LOCK_SHADOW_STACK_STATUS allows any bit to be locked, this allows + userspace to prevent changes to any future features. + +* There is no support for a process to remove a lock that has been set for + it. + +* PR_SET_SHADOW_STACK_STATUS and PR_LOCK_SHADOW_STACK_STATUS affect only the + thread that called them, any other running threads will be unaffected. + +* New threads inherit the GCS configuration of the thread that created them. + +* GCS is disabled on exec(). + +* The current GCS configuration for a thread may be read with the + PR_GET_SHADOW_STACK_STATUS prctl(), this returns the same flags that + are passed to PR_SET_SHADOW_STACK_STATUS. + +* If GCS is disabled for a thread after having previously been enabled then + the stack will remain allocated for the lifetime of the thread. At present + any attempt to reenable GCS for the thread will be rejected, this may be + revisited in future. + +* It should be noted that since enabling GCS will result in GCS becoming + active immediately it is not normally possible to return from the function + that invoked the prctl() that enabled GCS. It is expected that the normal + usage will be that GCS is enabled very early in execution of a program. + + + +3. Allocation of Guarded Control Stacks +---------------------------------------- + +* When GCS is enabled for a thread a new Guarded Control Stack will be + allocated for it of half the standard stack size or 2 gigabytes, + whichever is smaller. + +* When a new thread is created by a thread which has GCS enabled then a + new Guarded Control Stack will be allocated for the new thread with + half the size of the standard stack. + +* When a stack is allocated by enabling GCS or during thread creation then + the top 8 bytes of the stack will be initialised to 0 and GCSPR_EL0 will + be set to point to the address of this 0 value, this can be used to + detect the top of the stack. + +* Additional Guarded Control Stacks can be allocated using the + map_shadow_stack() system call. + +* Stacks allocated using map_shadow_stack() can optionally have an end of + stack marker and cap placed at the top of the stack. If the flag + SHADOW_STACK_SET_TOKEN is specified a cap will be placed on the stack, + if SHADOW_STACK_SET_MARKER is not specified the cap will be the top 8 + bytes of the stack and if it is specified then the cap will be the next + 8 bytes. While specifying just SHADOW_STACK_SET_MARKER by itself is + valid since the marker is all bits 0 it has no observable effect. + +* Stacks allocated using map_shadow_stack() must have a size which is a + multiple of 8 bytes larger than 8 bytes and must be 8 bytes aligned. + +* An address can be specified to map_shadow_stack(), if one is provided then + it must be aligned to a page boundary. + +* When a thread is freed the Guarded Control Stack initially allocated for + that thread will be freed. Note carefully that if the stack has been + switched this may not be the stack currently in use by the thread. + + +4. Signal handling +-------------------- + +* A new signal frame record gcs_context encodes the current GCS mode and + pointer for the interrupted context on signal delivery. This will always + be present on systems that support GCS. + +* The record contains a flag field which reports the current GCS configuration + for the interrupted context as PR_GET_SHADOW_STACK_STATUS would. + +* The signal handler is run with the same GCS configuration as the interrupted + context. + +* When GCS is enabled for the interrupted thread a signal handling specific + GCS cap token will be written to the GCS, this is an architectural GCS cap + with the token type (bits 0..11) all clear. The GCSPR_EL0 reported in the + signal frame will point to this cap token. + +* The signal handler will use the same GCS as the interrupted context. + +* When GCS is enabled on signal entry a frame with the address of the signal + return handler will be pushed onto the GCS, allowing return from the signal + handler via RET as normal. This will not be reported in the gcs_context in + the signal frame. + + +5. Signal return +----------------- + +When returning from a signal handler: + +* If there is a gcs_context record in the signal frame then the GCS flags + and GCSPR_EL0 will be restored from that context prior to further + validation. + +* If there is no gcs_context record in the signal frame then the GCS + configuration will be unchanged. + +* If GCS is enabled on return from a signal handler then GCSPR_EL0 must + point to a valid GCS signal cap record, this will be popped from the + GCS prior to signal return. + +* If the GCS configuration is locked when returning from a signal then any + attempt to change the GCS configuration will be treated as an error. This + is true even if GCS was not enabled prior to signal entry. + +* GCS may be disabled via signal return but any attempt to enable GCS via + signal return will be rejected. + + +6. ptrace extensions +--------------------- + +* A new regset NT_ARM_GCS is defined for use with PTRACE_GETREGSET and + PTRACE_SETREGSET. + +* Due to the complexity surrounding allocation and deallocation of stacks and + lack of practical application it is not possible to enable GCS via ptrace. + GCS may be disabled via the ptrace interface. + +* Other GCS modes may be configured via ptrace. + +* Configuration via ptrace ignores locking of GCS mode bits. + + +7. ELF coredump extensions +--------------------------- + +* NT_ARM_GCS notes will be added to each coredump for each thread of the + dumped process. The contents will be equivalent to the data that would + have been read if a PTRACE_GETREGSET of the corresponding type were + executed for each thread when the coredump was generated. + + + +8. /proc extensions +-------------------- + +* Guarded Control Stack pages will include "ss" in their VmFlags in + /proc/<pid>/smaps. diff --git a/Documentation/arch/arm64/index.rst b/Documentation/arch/arm64/index.rst index 78544de0a8a9..056f6a739d25 100644 --- a/Documentation/arch/arm64/index.rst +++ b/Documentation/arch/arm64/index.rst @@ -15,6 +15,7 @@ ARM64 Architecture cpu-feature-registers cpu-hotplug elf_hwcaps + gcs hugetlbpage kdump legacy_instructions