linux-next/Documentation/userspace-api/mseal.rst

.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0

=====================
Introduction of mseal
=====================

:Author: Jeff Xu <jeffxu@chromium.org>

Modern CPUs support memory permissions such as RW and NX bits. The memory
permission feature improves security stance on memory corruption bugs, i.e.
the attacker can’t just write to arbitrary memory and point the code to it,
the memory has to be marked with X bit, or else an exception will happen.

Memory sealing additionally protects the mapping itself against
modifications. This is useful to mitigate memory corruption issues where a
corrupted pointer is passed to a memory management system. For example,
such an attacker primitive can break control-flow integrity guarantees
since read-only memory that is supposed to be trusted can become writable
or .text pages can get remapped. Memory sealing can automatically be
applied by the runtime loader to seal .text and .rodata pages and
applications can additionally seal security critical data at runtime.

A similar feature already exists in the XNU kernel with the
VM_FLAGS_PERMANENT flag [1] and on OpenBSD with the mimmutable syscall [2].

User API
========
mseal()
-----------
The mseal() syscall has the following signature:

``int mseal(void addr, size_t len, unsigned long flags)``

**addr/len**: virtual memory address range.

The address range set by ``addr``/``len`` must meet:
   - The start address must be in an allocated VMA.
   - The start address must be page aligned.
   - The end address (``addr`` + ``len``) must be in an allocated VMA.
   - no gap (unallocated memory) between start and end address.

The ``len`` will be paged aligned implicitly by the kernel.

**flags**: reserved for future use.

**return values**:

- ``0``: Success.

- ``-EINVAL``:
    - Invalid input ``flags``.
    - The start address (``addr``) is not page aligned.
    - Address range (``addr`` + ``len``) overflow.

- ``-ENOMEM``:
    - The start address (``addr``) is not allocated.
    - The end address (``addr`` + ``len``) is not allocated.
    - A gap (unallocated memory) between start and end address.

- ``-EPERM``:
    - sealing is supported only on 64-bit CPUs, 32-bit is not supported.

- For above error cases, users can expect the given memory range is
  unmodified, i.e. no partial update.

- There might be other internal errors/cases not listed here, e.g.
  error during merging/splitting VMAs, or the process reaching the max
  number of supported VMAs. In those cases, partial updates to the given
  memory range could happen. However, those cases should be rare.

**Blocked operations after sealing**:
    Unmapping, moving to another location, and shrinking the size,
    via munmap() and mremap(), can leave an empty space, therefore
    can be replaced with a VMA with a new set of attributes.

    Moving or expanding a different VMA into the current location,
    via mremap().

    Modifying a VMA via mmap(MAP_FIXED).

    Size expansion, via mremap(), does not appear to pose any
    specific risks to sealed VMAs. It is included anyway because
    the use case is unclear. In any case, users can rely on
    merging to expand a sealed VMA.

    mprotect() and pkey_mprotect().

    Some destructive madvice() behaviors (e.g. MADV_DONTNEED)
    for anonymous memory, when users don't have write permission to the
    memory. Those behaviors can alter region contents by discarding pages,
    effectively a memset(0) for anonymous memory.

    Kernel will return -EPERM for blocked operations.

    For blocked operations, one can expect the given address is unmodified,
    i.e. no partial update. Note, this is different from existing mm
    system call behaviors, where partial updates are made till an error is
    found and returned to userspace. To give an example:

    Assume following code sequence:

    - ptr = mmap(null, 8192, PROT_NONE);
    - munmap(ptr + 4096, 4096);
    - ret1 = mprotect(ptr, 8192, PROT_READ);
    - mseal(ptr, 4096);
    - ret2 = mprotect(ptr, 8192, PROT_NONE);

    ret1 will be -ENOMEM, the page from ptr is updated to PROT_READ.

    ret2 will be -EPERM, the page remains to be PROT_READ.

**Note**:

- mseal() only works on 64-bit CPUs, not 32-bit CPU.

- users can call mseal() multiple times, mseal() on an already sealed memory
  is a no-action (not error).

- munseal() is not supported.

Use cases:
==========
- glibc:
  The dynamic linker, during loading ELF executables, can apply sealing to
  non-writable memory segments.

- Chrome browser: protect some security sensitive data-structures.

Notes on which memory to seal:
==============================

It might be important to note that sealing changes the lifetime of a mapping,
i.e. the sealed mapping won’t be unmapped till the process terminates or the
exec system call is invoked. Applications can apply sealing to any virtual
memory region from userspace, but it is crucial to thoroughly analyze the
mapping's lifetime prior to apply the sealing.

For example:

- aio/shm

  aio/shm can call mmap()/munmap() on behalf of userspace, e.g. ksys_shmdt() in
  shm.c. The lifetime of those mapping are not tied to the lifetime of the
  process. If those memories are sealed from userspace, then munmap() will fail,
  causing leaks in VMA address space during the lifetime of the process.

- Brk (heap)

  Currently, userspace applications can seal parts of the heap by calling
  malloc() and mseal().
  let's assume following calls from user space:

  - ptr = malloc(size);
  - mprotect(ptr, size, RO);
  - mseal(ptr, size);
  - free(ptr);

  Technically, before mseal() is added, the user can change the protection of
  the heap by calling mprotect(RO). As long as the user changes the protection
  back to RW before free(), the memory range can be reused.

  Adding mseal() into the picture, however, the heap is then sealed partially,
  the user can still free it, but the memory remains to be RO. If the address
  is re-used by the heap manager for another malloc, the process might crash
  soon after. Therefore, it is important not to apply sealing to any memory
  that might get recycled.

  Furthermore, even if the application never calls the free() for the ptr,
  the heap manager may invoke the brk system call to shrink the size of the
  heap. In the kernel, the brk-shrink will call munmap(). Consequently,
  depending on the location of the ptr, the outcome of brk-shrink is
  nondeterministic.


Additional notes:
=================
As Jann Horn pointed out in [3], there are still a few ways to write
to RO memory, which is, in a way, by design. Those cases are not covered
by mseal(). If applications want to block such cases, sandbox tools (such as
seccomp, LSM, etc) might be considered.

Those cases are:

- Write to read-only memory through /proc/self/mem interface.
- Write to read-only memory through ptrace (such as PTRACE_POKETEXT).
- userfaultfd.

The idea that inspired this patch comes from Stephen Röttger’s work in V8
CFI [4]. Chrome browser in ChromeOS will be the first user of this API.

Reference:
==========
[1] https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu/blob/1031c584a5e37aff177559b9f69dbd3c8c3fd30a/osfmk/mach/vm_statistics.h#L274

[2] https://man.openbsd.org/mimmutable.2

[3] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAG48ez3ShUYey+ZAFsU2i1RpQn0a5eOs2hzQ426FkcgnfUGLvA@mail.gmail.com

[4] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O2jwK4dxI3nRcOJuPYkonhTkNQfbmwdvxQMyXgeaRHo/edit#heading=h.bvaojj9fu6hc