tree 8aa3d281c0f5cefbc8dcbced2c5b508c198a257f
parent 78066055b08096ed3282c027de9d9e137f9a1580
author Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org> 1585291699 -0700
committer Borislav Petkov <bp@suse.de> 1587404539 +0200

arm32/64/elf: Split READ_IMPLIES_EXEC from executable PT_GNU_STACK

The READ_IMPLIES_EXEC work-around was designed for old toolchains that
lacked the ELF PT_GNU_STACK marking under the assumption that toolchains
that couldn't specify executable permission flags for the stack may not
know how to do it correctly for any memory region.

This logic is sensible for having ancient binaries coexist in a system
with possibly NX memory, but was implemented in a way that equated having
a PT_GNU_STACK marked executable as being as "broken" as lacking the
PT_GNU_STACK marking entirely. Things like unmarked assembly and stack
trampolines may cause PT_GNU_STACK to need an executable bit, but they
do not imply all mappings must be executable.

This confusion has led to situations where modern programs with explicitly
marked executable stack are forced into the READ_IMPLIES_EXEC state when
no such thing is needed. (And leads to unexpected failures when mmap()ing
regions of device driver memory that wish to disallow VM_EXEC[1].)

In looking for other reasons for the READ_IMPLIES_EXEC behavior, Jann
Horn noted that glibc thread stacks have always been marked RWX (until
2003 when they started tracking the PT_GNU_STACK flag instead[2]). And
musl doesn't support executable stacks at all[3]. As such, no breakage
for multithreaded applications is expected from this change.

This changes arm32 and arm64 compat together, to keep behavior the same.

[1] https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20190418055759.GA3155@mellanox.com
[2] https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=commitdiff;h=54ee14b3882
[3] https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20190423192534.GN23599@brightrain.aerifal.cx

Suggested-by: Hector Marco-Gisbert <hecmargi@upv.es>
Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov <bp@suse.de>
Reviewed-by: Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@mellanox.com>
Reviewed-by: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200327064820.12602-6-keescook@chromium.org