list: Introduce CONFIG_LIST_HARDENED

Numerous production kernel configs (see [1, 2]) are choosing to enable
CONFIG_DEBUG_LIST, which is also being recommended by KSPP for hardened
configs [3]. The motivation behind this is that the option can be used
as a security hardening feature (e.g. CVE-2019-2215 and CVE-2019-2025
are mitigated by the option [4]).

The feature has never been designed with performance in mind, yet common
list manipulation is happening across hot paths all over the kernel.

Introduce CONFIG_LIST_HARDENED, which performs list pointer checking
inline, and only upon list corruption calls the reporting slow path.

To generate optimal machine code with CONFIG_LIST_HARDENED:

  1. Elide checking for pointer values which upon dereference would
     result in an immediate access fault (i.e. minimal hardening
     checks).  The trade-off is lower-quality error reports.

  2. Use the __preserve_most function attribute (available with Clang,
     but not yet with GCC) to minimize the code footprint for calling
     the reporting slow path. As a result, function size of callers is
     reduced by avoiding saving registers before calling the rarely
     called reporting slow path.

     Note that all TUs in lib/Makefile already disable function tracing,
     including list_debug.c, and __preserve_most's implied notrace has
     no effect in this case.

  3. Because the inline checks are a subset of the full set of checks in
     __list_*_valid_or_report(), always return false if the inline
     checks failed.  This avoids redundant compare and conditional
     branch right after return from the slow path.

As a side-effect of the checks being inline, if the compiler can prove
some condition to always be true, it can completely elide some checks.

Since DEBUG_LIST is functionally a superset of LIST_HARDENED, the
Kconfig variables are changed to reflect that: DEBUG_LIST selects
LIST_HARDENED, whereas LIST_HARDENED itself has no dependency on
DEBUG_LIST.

Running netperf with CONFIG_LIST_HARDENED (using a Clang compiler with
"preserve_most") shows throughput improvements, in my case of ~7% on
average (up to 20-30% on some test cases).

Link: https://r.android.com/1266735 [1]
Link: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/linux/-/blob/main/config [2]
Link: https://kernsec.org/wiki/index.php/Kernel_Self_Protection_Project/Recommended_Settings [3]
Link: https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2019/11/bad-binder-android-in-wild-exploit.html [4]
Signed-off-by: Marco Elver <elver@google.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20230811151847.1594958-3-elver@google.com
Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>

1 files changed, 13 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/security/Kconfig.hardening b/security/Kconfig.hardening
index 0f295961e773..ffc3c702b461 100644
--- a/security/Kconfig.hardening
+++ b/security/Kconfig.hardening
@@ -279,6 +279,19 @@ config ZERO_CALL_USED_REGS
 
 endmenu
 
+menu "Hardening of kernel data structures"
+
+config LIST_HARDENED
+	bool "Check integrity of linked list manipulation"
+	help
+	  Minimal integrity checking in the linked-list manipulation routines
+	  to catch memory corruptions that are not guaranteed to result in an
+	  immediate access fault.
+
+	  If unsure, say N.
+
+endmenu
+
 config CC_HAS_RANDSTRUCT
 	def_bool $(cc-option,-frandomize-layout-seed-file=/dev/null)
 	# Randstruct was first added in Clang 15, but it isn't safe to use until