Subject: Re: [iovisor-dev] [PATCH v3 net-next 02/12] bpf/verifier: rework
 value tracking
To: Nadav Amit <nadav.amit@gmail.com>
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CC: <davem@davemloft.net>,
        Alexei Starovoitov <alexei.starovoitov@gmail.com>,
        Alexei Starovoitov <ast@fb.com>,
        Daniel Borkmann <daniel@iogearbox.net>, <netdev@vger.kernel.org>,
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From: Edward Cree <ecree@solarflare.com>
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Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2017 20:13:45 +0100
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On 07/07/17 18:45, Nadav Amit wrote:
> For me changes such as:
>
>> 		if (dst_reg->min_value != BPF_REGISTER_MIN_RANGE)
>> -			dst_reg->min_value -= min_val;
>> +			dst_reg->min_value -= max_val;
>
> are purely cryptic. What happened here? Was there a bug before and if so
> what are its implications? Why can’t it be in a separate patch?
In this specific case, there was a bug before: if (say) src and dst were
 both unknown bytes (so range 0 to 255), it would compute the new min and max
 to be 0, so it would think the result is known to be 0.  But that's wrong,
 because it could be anything from -255 to +255.  The bug's implications are
 that it could be used to construct an out-of-range offset to (say) a map
 pointer which the verifier would think was in-range and thus accept.
It might be possible to put it in a separate patch, but in general (not
 necessarily the case here) isolated fixes to range handling break some of
 the existing regression tests.  That is why I ended up doing patch #4,
 because I couldn't find a small fix for the patch #1 test without breaking
 others.  Essentially, this patch started out as just the tnum tracking to
 replace imm and align, and then rolled in everything I had to do to get the
 regression tests to pass again.  So some of those things are fixes that
 could go in earlier patches, but because of the order I wrote it in I'd have
 to disentangle them.  I can do that if it's necessary, but I'm not sure it'd
 really make the patch that much more readable so I'd rather avoid that work
 if I can get away with it...
> I also think that changes such as:
>> -	s64 min_value;
>> -	u64 max_value;
> [snip]
>> +	s64 min_value; /* minimum possible (s64)value */
>> +	u64 max_value; /* maximum possible (u64)value */
> Should have been avoided. Personally, I find this comment redundant (to say
> the least). It does not help to reduce the diff size.
The comment is meaningful, though perhaps badly phrased.  It's an attempt to
 define the semantics of these fields (which previously was unclear); e.g. the
 first one means "minimum value when interpreted as signed", i.e. the (s64) in
 the comment is a cast.
Apparently those weren't the semantics the original author intended, but I'm
 not sure the original semantics were well-defined and I certainly don't
 understand them well enough to define them, hence why I defined my own here
 (and then redefined them in patch #4).
> In this regard, I think that refactoring should have been done first and not
> together with the logic changes. As another example, changing UNKNOWN_VALUE
> to SCALAR_VALUE should have been a separate, easy to understand patch.
But SCALAR_VALUE is the union UNKNOWN_VALUE *or* CONST_IMM, and merging those
 together means all of the ripping-out of evaluate_reg_alu() and friends and
 thus depends on much of the rest of the patch.
>> The latter is also needed for correctness in computing reg->range;
>> if 'pkt_ptr + offset' could conceivably overflow, then the result
>> could be < pkt_end without being a valid pointer into the packet.
>> We thus rely on the assumption that the packet pointer will never be
>> within MAX_PACKET_OFF of the top of the address space.  (This
>> assumption is, again, carried over from the existing verifier.)
> I understand the limitations (I think). I agree that CONST being spillable
> is not directly related. As for the possible packet offsets/range:
> intentionally or not you do make some changes that push the 64k packet size
> limit even deeper into the code. While the packet size should be limited to
> avoid overflow, IIUC the requirement is that:
>
> 	64 > log(n_insn) + log(MAX_PACKET_OFF) + 1
I don't think that's right, unless you also make each addition to a packet-
 pointer require a max_value <= MAX_PACKET_OFF.  It's also a very loose bound
 because it assumes every instruction is such an add.
I think it makes far more sense to do it the way I have done, where the bounds
 are tracked all the way through the arithmetic and then only checked against
 MAX_PACKET_OFF when doing the access (and when doing a test against a
 PTR_TO_PACKET_END, i.e. find_good_pkt_pointers(), though for some reason I
 only added that check in patch #4).
That way we can allow things like (for the sake of example) adding $BIG_NUMBER
 to a packet pointer and then subtracting it again.
> Such an assertion may be staticly checked (using BUILD_BUG_ON), but I don’t
> think should propagate into the entire code, especially in a non consistent
> way. For example:
>
>> struct bpf_reg_state {
>> 	enum bpf_reg_type type;
>> 	union {
>> -		/* valid when type == CONST_IMM | PTR_TO_STACK | UNKNOWN_VALUE */
>> -		s64 imm;
>> -
>> -		/* valid when type == PTR_TO_PACKET* */
>> -		struct {
>> -			u16 off;
>> -			u16 range;
>> -		};
>> +		/* valid when type == PTR_TO_PACKET */
>> +		u32 range;
> I would (personally) prefer range (and offsets) to be u64. I could
> understand if you left the range as u16 (since packet size is limited to
> 64k). But why would it be u32?
I'm not sure; I think I did that so that it would be the same size as the
 struct it's replacing.  In other words, no reason really.  But I will have
 to think about the implications for overflow handling if it's changed.
> Or:
>> -	if (off < 0 || size <= 0 || off + size > reg->range) {
>> +	if (off < 0 || size <= 0 || off > MAX_PACKET_OFF ||
>> +	    off + size > reg->range) {
> Why don’t you check (off + size > max(MAX_PACKET_OFF, reg->range))? Is there
> a reason you ignore size when comparing to MAX_PACKET_OFF ?
Actually, having thought further about this, I think only the check in
 find_good_pkt_pointers() is necessary (though possibly taking account of the
 fixed offset as well as the var_off), since that naturally limits how much
 reg->range we can acquire to MAX_PACKET_OFF.
But you're right that checking off rather than off + size is weird, I don't
 recall why I did that and I can't see a reason for it.

-Ed