diff options
| author | York Jasper Niebuhr <yjnworkstation@gmail.com> | 2024-03-29 15:56:05 +0100 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> | 2024-04-25 20:56:29 -0700 |
| commit | ba42b524a0408b5f92bd41edaee1ea84309ab9ae (patch) | |
| tree | 486d06613fac993ec46042d48d87c0e39859b565 /security | |
| parent | 6c47de3be3a021d8b28d127802d590a49598a514 (diff) | |
mm: init_mlocked_on_free_v3
Implements the "init_mlocked_on_free" boot option. When this boot option
is enabled, any mlock'ed pages are zeroed on free. If
the pages are munlock'ed beforehand, no initialization takes place.
This boot option is meant to combat the performance hit of
"init_on_free" as reported in commit 6471384af2a6 ("mm: security:
introduce init_on_alloc=1 and init_on_free=1 boot options"). With
"init_mlocked_on_free=1" only relevant data is freed while everything
else is left untouched by the kernel. Correspondingly, this patch
introduces no performance hit for unmapping non-mlock'ed memory. The
unmapping overhead for purely mlocked memory was measured to be
approximately 13%. Realistically, most systems mlock only a fraction of
the total memory so the real-world system overhead should be close to
zero.
Optimally, userspace programs clear any key material or other
confidential memory before exit and munlock the according memory
regions. If a program crashes, userspace key managers fail to do this
job. Accordingly, no munlock operations are performed so the data is
caught and zeroed by the kernel. Should the program not crash, all
memory will ideally be munlocked so no overhead is caused.
CONFIG_INIT_MLOCKED_ON_FREE_DEFAULT_ON can be set to enable
"init_mlocked_on_free" by default.
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20240329145605.149917-1-yjnworkstation@gmail.com
Signed-off-by: York Jasper Niebuhr <yjnworkstation@gmail.com>
Cc: Matthew Wilcox (Oracle) <willy@infradead.org>
Cc: York Jasper Niebuhr <yjnworkstation@gmail.com>
Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'security')
| -rw-r--r-- | security/Kconfig.hardening | 15 |
1 files changed, 15 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/security/Kconfig.hardening b/security/Kconfig.hardening index 2cff851ebfd7..effbf5982be1 100644 --- a/security/Kconfig.hardening +++ b/security/Kconfig.hardening @@ -255,6 +255,21 @@ config INIT_ON_FREE_DEFAULT_ON touching "cold" memory areas. Most cases see 3-5% impact. Some synthetic workloads have measured as high as 8%. +config INIT_MLOCKED_ON_FREE_DEFAULT_ON + bool "Enable mlocked memory zeroing on free" + depends on !KMSAN + help + This config has the effect of setting "init_mlocked_on_free=1" + on the kernel command line. If it is enabled, all mlocked process + memory is zeroed when freed. This restriction to mlocked memory + improves performance over "init_on_free" but can still be used to + protect confidential data like key material from content exposures + to other processes, as well as live forensics and cold boot attacks. + Any non-mlocked memory is not cleared before it is reassigned. This + configuration can be overwritten by setting "init_mlocked_on_free=0" + on the command line. The "init_on_free" boot option takes + precedence over "init_mlocked_on_free". + config CC_HAS_ZERO_CALL_USED_REGS def_bool $(cc-option,-fzero-call-used-regs=used-gpr) # https://github.com/ClangBuiltLinux/linux/issues/1766 |