bpf: Allow trusted pointers to be passed to KF_TRUSTED_ARGS kfuncs

Kfuncs currently support specifying the KF_TRUSTED_ARGS flag to signal
to the verifier that it should enforce that a BPF program passes it a
"safe", trusted pointer. Currently, "safe" means that the pointer is
either PTR_TO_CTX, or is refcounted. There may be cases, however, where
the kernel passes a BPF program a safe / trusted pointer to an object
that the BPF program wishes to use as a kptr, but because the object
does not yet have a ref_obj_id from the perspective of the verifier, the
program would be unable to pass it to a KF_ACQUIRE | KF_TRUSTED_ARGS
kfunc.

The solution is to expand the set of pointers that are considered
trusted according to KF_TRUSTED_ARGS, so that programs can invoke kfuncs
with these pointers without getting rejected by the verifier.

There is already a PTR_UNTRUSTED flag that is set in some scenarios,
such as when a BPF program reads a kptr directly from a map
without performing a bpf_kptr_xchg() call. These pointers of course can
and should be rejected by the verifier. Unfortunately, however,
PTR_UNTRUSTED does not cover all the cases for safety that need to
be addressed to adequately protect kfuncs. Specifically, pointers
obtained by a BPF program "walking" a struct are _not_ considered
PTR_UNTRUSTED according to BPF. For example, say that we were to add a
kfunc called bpf_task_acquire(), with KF_ACQUIRE | KF_TRUSTED_ARGS, to
acquire a struct task_struct *. If we only used PTR_UNTRUSTED to signal
that a task was unsafe to pass to a kfunc, the verifier would mistakenly
allow the following unsafe BPF program to be loaded:

SEC("tp_btf/task_newtask")
int BPF_PROG(unsafe_acquire_task,
             struct task_struct *task,
             u64 clone_flags)
{
        struct task_struct *acquired, *nested;

        nested = task->last_wakee;

        /* Would not be rejected by the verifier. */
        acquired = bpf_task_acquire(nested);
        if (!acquired)
                return 0;

        bpf_task_release(acquired);
        return 0;
}

To address this, this patch defines a new type flag called PTR_TRUSTED
which tracks whether a PTR_TO_BTF_ID pointer is safe to pass to a
KF_TRUSTED_ARGS kfunc or a BPF helper function. PTR_TRUSTED pointers are
passed directly from the kernel as a tracepoint or struct_ops callback
argument. Any nested pointer that is obtained from walking a PTR_TRUSTED
pointer is no longer PTR_TRUSTED. From the example above, the struct
task_struct *task argument is PTR_TRUSTED, but the 'nested' pointer
obtained from 'task->last_wakee' is not PTR_TRUSTED.

A subsequent patch will add kfuncs for storing a task kfunc as a kptr,
and then another patch will add selftests to validate.

Signed-off-by: David Vernet <void@manifault.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20221120051004.3605026-3-void@manifault.com
Signed-off-by: Alexei Starovoitov <ast@kernel.org>

1 files changed, 30 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/include/linux/bpf.h b/include/linux/bpf.h
index 8b32376ce746..c9eafa67f2a2 100644
--- a/include/linux/bpf.h
+++ b/include/linux/bpf.h
@@ -543,6 +543,35 @@ enum bpf_type_flag {
 	 */
 	MEM_ALLOC		= BIT(11 + BPF_BASE_TYPE_BITS),
 
+	/* PTR was passed from the kernel in a trusted context, and may be
+	 * passed to KF_TRUSTED_ARGS kfuncs or BPF helper functions.
+	 * Confusingly, this is _not_ the opposite of PTR_UNTRUSTED above.
+	 * PTR_UNTRUSTED refers to a kptr that was read directly from a map
+	 * without invoking bpf_kptr_xchg(). What we really need to know is
+	 * whether a pointer is safe to pass to a kfunc or BPF helper function.
+	 * While PTR_UNTRUSTED pointers are unsafe to pass to kfuncs and BPF
+	 * helpers, they do not cover all possible instances of unsafe
+	 * pointers. For example, a pointer that was obtained from walking a
+	 * struct will _not_ get the PTR_UNTRUSTED type modifier, despite the
+	 * fact that it may be NULL, invalid, etc. This is due to backwards
+	 * compatibility requirements, as this was the behavior that was first
+	 * introduced when kptrs were added. The behavior is now considered
+	 * deprecated, and PTR_UNTRUSTED will eventually be removed.
+	 *
+	 * PTR_TRUSTED, on the other hand, is a pointer that the kernel
+	 * guarantees to be valid and safe to pass to kfuncs and BPF helpers.
+	 * For example, pointers passed to tracepoint arguments are considered
+	 * PTR_TRUSTED, as are pointers that are passed to struct_ops
+	 * callbacks. As alluded to above, pointers that are obtained from
+	 * walking PTR_TRUSTED pointers are _not_ trusted. For example, if a
+	 * struct task_struct *task is PTR_TRUSTED, then accessing
+	 * task->last_wakee will lose the PTR_TRUSTED modifier when it's stored
+	 * in a BPF register. Similarly, pointers passed to certain programs
+	 * types such as kretprobes are not guaranteed to be valid, as they may
+	 * for example contain an object that was recently freed.
+	 */
+	PTR_TRUSTED		= BIT(12 + BPF_BASE_TYPE_BITS),
+
 	__BPF_TYPE_FLAG_MAX,
 	__BPF_TYPE_LAST_FLAG	= __BPF_TYPE_FLAG_MAX - 1,
 };
@@ -636,6 +665,7 @@ enum bpf_return_type {
 	RET_PTR_TO_RINGBUF_MEM_OR_NULL	= PTR_MAYBE_NULL | MEM_RINGBUF | RET_PTR_TO_MEM,
 	RET_PTR_TO_DYNPTR_MEM_OR_NULL	= PTR_MAYBE_NULL | RET_PTR_TO_MEM,
 	RET_PTR_TO_BTF_ID_OR_NULL	= PTR_MAYBE_NULL | RET_PTR_TO_BTF_ID,
+	RET_PTR_TO_BTF_ID_TRUSTED	= PTR_TRUSTED	 | RET_PTR_TO_BTF_ID,
 
 	/* This must be the last entry. Its purpose is to ensure the enum is
 	 * wide enough to hold the higher bits reserved for bpf_type_flag.