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Kees Cook e01e80634e fork: unconditionally clear stack on fork
One of the classes of kernel stack content leaks[1] is exposing the
contents of prior heap or stack contents when a new process stack is
allocated.  Normally, those stacks are not zeroed, and the old contents
remain in place.  In the face of stack content exposure flaws, those
contents can leak to userspace.

Fixing this will make the kernel no longer vulnerable to these flaws, as
the stack will be wiped each time a stack is assigned to a new process.
There's not a meaningful change in runtime performance; it almost looks
like it provides a benefit.

Performing back-to-back kernel builds before:
	Run times: 157.86 157.09 158.90 160.94 160.80
	Mean: 159.12
	Std Dev: 1.54

and after:
	Run times: 159.31 157.34 156.71 158.15 160.81
	Mean: 158.46
	Std Dev: 1.46

Instead of making this a build or runtime config, Andy Lutomirski
recommended this just be enabled by default.

[1] A noisy search for many kinds of stack content leaks can be seen here:
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=linux+kernel+stack+leak

I did some more with perf and cycle counts on running 100,000 execs of
/bin/true.

before:
Cycles: 218858861551 218853036130 214727610969 227656844122 224980542841
Mean:  221015379122.60
Std Dev: 4662486552.47

after:
Cycles: 213868945060 213119275204 211820169456 224426673259 225489986348
Mean:  217745009865.40
Std Dev: 5935559279.99

It continues to look like it's faster, though the deviation is rather
wide, but I'm not sure what I could do that would be less noisy.  I'm
open to ideas!

Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20180221021659.GA37073@beast
Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Acked-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Reviewed-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org>
Cc: Laura Abbott <labbott@redhat.com>
Cc: Rasmus Villemoes <rasmus.villemoes@prevas.dk>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2018-04-20 17:18:35 -07:00
arch Merge branch 'for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/viro/vfs 2018-04-20 09:15:14 -07:00
block blk-mq: Revert "blk-mq: reimplement blk_mq_hw_queue_mapped" 2018-04-11 07:59:15 -06:00
certs certs/blacklist_nohashes.c: fix const confusion in certs blacklist 2018-02-21 15:35:43 -08:00
crypto Kbuild updates for v4.17 (2nd) 2018-04-15 17:21:30 -07:00
Documentation Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net 2018-04-20 09:34:39 -07:00
drivers Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net 2018-04-20 09:34:39 -07:00
firmware kbuild: remove all dummy assignments to obj- 2017-11-18 11:46:06 +09:00
fs vfs: Undo an overly zealous MS_RDONLY -> SB_RDONLY conversion 2018-04-20 09:59:33 -07:00
include fork: unconditionally clear stack on fork 2018-04-20 17:18:35 -07:00
init Merge branch 'x86-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2018-04-15 16:12:35 -07:00
ipc ipc/shm: fix use-after-free of shm file via remap_file_pages() 2018-04-13 17:10:27 -07:00
kernel fork: unconditionally clear stack on fork 2018-04-20 17:18:35 -07:00
lib Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net 2018-04-20 09:34:39 -07:00
LICENSES LICENSES: Add MPL-1.1 license 2018-01-06 10:59:44 -07:00
mm mm,vmscan: Allow preallocating memory for register_shrinker(). 2018-04-16 02:06:47 -04:00
net Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net 2018-04-20 09:34:39 -07:00
samples Merge branch 'for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jikos/livepatching 2018-04-20 08:51:55 -07:00
scripts Kbuild updates for v4.17 (2nd) 2018-04-15 17:21:30 -07:00
security + Features 2018-04-13 15:38:53 -07:00
sound amdgpu, omap and snd regression fix 2018-04-12 20:56:10 -07:00
tools Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net 2018-04-20 09:34:39 -07:00
usr kbuild: rename built-in.o to built-in.a 2018-03-26 02:01:19 +09:00
virt KVM/ARM updates for v4.17 2018-03-28 16:09:09 +02:00
.clang-format clang-format: add configuration file 2018-04-11 10:28:35 -07:00
.cocciconfig
.get_maintainer.ignore
.gitattributes .gitattributes: set git diff driver for C source code files 2016-10-07 18:46:30 -07:00
.gitignore Kbuild updates for v4.17 (2nd) 2018-04-15 17:21:30 -07:00
.mailmap Merge candidates for 4.17 merge window 2018-04-06 17:35:43 -07:00
COPYING COPYING: use the new text with points to the license files 2018-03-23 12:41:45 -06:00
CREDITS MAINTAINERS/CREDITS: Drop METAG ARCHITECTURE 2018-03-05 16:34:24 +00:00
Kbuild Kbuild updates for v4.15 2017-11-17 17:45:29 -08:00
Kconfig License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
MAINTAINERS Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net 2018-04-20 09:34:39 -07:00
Makefile Linux 4.17-rc1 2018-04-15 18:24:20 -07:00
README Docs: Added a pointer to the formatted docs to README 2018-03-21 09:02:53 -06:00

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.
See Documentation/00-INDEX for a list of what is contained in each file.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.