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Date:   Thu, 4 Feb 2021 13:31:45 +0200
From:   Mike Rapoport <rppt@kernel.org>
To:     Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Cc:     James Bottomley <jejb@linux.ibm.com>,
        David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
        Alexander Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>,
        Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org>,
        Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>, Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>,
        Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>,
        Christopher Lameter <cl@linux.com>,
        Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>,
        Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>,
        Elena Reshetova <elena.reshetova@intel.com>,
        "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>,
        "Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill@shutemov.name>,
        Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>,
        Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@arm.com>,
        Mike Rapoport <rppt@linux.ibm.com>,
        Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>,
        Palmer Dabbelt <palmer@dabbelt.com>,
        Paul Walmsley <paul.walmsley@sifive.com>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>,
        Rick Edgecombe <rick.p.edgecombe@intel.com>,
        Roman Gushchin <guro@fb.com>,
        Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@google.com>,
        Shuah Khan <shuah@kernel.org>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
        Tycho Andersen <tycho@tycho.ws>, Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>,
        linux-api@vger.kernel.org, linux-arch@vger.kernel.org,
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        x86@kernel.org, Hagen Paul Pfeifer <hagen@jauu.net>,
        Palmer Dabbelt <palmerdabbelt@google.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v16 07/11] secretmem: use PMD-size pages to amortize
 direct map fragmentation
Message-ID: <20210204113145.GR242749@kernel.org>
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 <20210202181546.GO242749@kernel.org>
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On Wed, Feb 03, 2021 at 01:09:30PM +0100, Michal Hocko wrote:
> On Tue 02-02-21 10:55:40, James Bottomley wrote:
> > On Tue, 2021-02-02 at 20:15 +0200, Mike Rapoport wrote:
> > > On Tue, Feb 02, 2021 at 03:34:29PM +0100, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> > > > On 02.02.21 15:32, Michal Hocko wrote:
> > 
> > Well the safest security statement is that we never expose the data to
> > the kernel because it's a very clean security statement and easy to
> > enforce. It's also the easiest threat model to analyse.   Once we do
> > start exposing the secret to the kernel it alters the threat profile
> > and the analysis and obviously potentially provides the ROP gadget to
> > an attacker to do the same. Instinct tells me that the loss of
> > security doesn't really make up for the ability to swap or migrate but
> > if there were a case for doing the latter, it would have to be a
> > security policy of the user (i.e. a user should be able to decide their
> > data is too sensitive to expose to the kernel).
> 
> The security/threat model should be documented in the changelog as
> well. I am not a security expert but I would tend to agree that not
> allowing even temporal mapping for data copying (in the kernel) is the
> most robust approach. Whether that is generally necessary for users I do
> not know.
> 
> From the API POV I think it makes sense to have two
> modes. NEVER_MAP_IN_KERNEL which would imply no migrateability, no
> copy_{from,to}_user, no gup or any other way for the kernel to access
> content of the memory. Maybe even zero the content on the last unmap to
> never allow any data leak. ALLOW_TEMPORARY would unmap the page from
> the direct mapping but it would still allow temporary mappings for
> data copying inside the kernel (thus allow CoW, copy*user, migration).
> Which one should be default and which an opt-in I do not know. A less
> restrictive mode to be default and the more restrictive an opt-in via
> flags makes a lot of sense to me though.

The default is already NEVER_MAP_IN_KERNEL, so there is no explicit flag
for this. ALLOW_TEMPORARY should be opt-in, IMHO, and we can add it on top
later on.

-- 
Sincerely yours,
Mike.