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authorKees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>2017-07-06 15:36:40 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2017-07-06 16:24:31 -0700
commit7660a6fddcbae344de8583aa4092071312f110c3 (patch)
treecf87d66431e544a85cd754cd5b54e2db68d25b13 /Documentation/admin-guide
parente07719502916a675023d9d31b9fd4370c7413b68 (diff)
mm: allow slab_nomerge to be set at build time
Some hardened environments want to build kernels with slab_nomerge already set (so that they do not depend on remembering to set the kernel command line option). This is desired to reduce the risk of kernel heap overflows being able to overwrite objects from merged caches and changes the requirements for cache layout control, increasing the difficulty of these attacks. By keeping caches unmerged, these kinds of exploits can usually only damage objects in the same cache (though the risk to metadata exploitation is unchanged). Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20170620230911.GA25238@beast Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org> Cc: Daniel Micay <danielmicay@gmail.com> Cc: David Windsor <dave@nullcore.net> Cc: Eric Biggers <ebiggers3@gmail.com> Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux.com> Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net> Cc: Daniel Micay <danielmicay@gmail.com> Cc: David Windsor <dave@nullcore.net> Cc: Eric Biggers <ebiggers3@gmail.com> Cc: Pekka Enberg <penberg@kernel.org> Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com> Cc: Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com> Cc: "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com> Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> Cc: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@kernel.org> Cc: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Cc: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de> Cc: Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org> Cc: Nicolas Pitre <nicolas.pitre@linaro.org> Cc: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org> Cc: Daniel Mack <daniel@zonque.org> Cc: Sebastian Andrzej Siewior <bigeasy@linutronix.de> Cc: Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com> Cc: Helge Deller <deller@gmx.de> Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Cc: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/admin-guide')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt10
1 files changed, 8 insertions, 2 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt b/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt
index f24ee1c99412..34ae9663aefd 100644
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt
@@ -3760,8 +3760,14 @@
slab_nomerge [MM]
Disable merging of slabs with similar size. May be
necessary if there is some reason to distinguish
- allocs to different slabs. Debug options disable
- merging on their own.
+ allocs to different slabs, especially in hardened
+ environments where the risk of heap overflows and
+ layout control by attackers can usually be
+ frustrated by disabling merging. This will reduce
+ most of the exposure of a heap attack to a single
+ cache (risks via metadata attacks are mostly
+ unchanged). Debug options disable merging on their
+ own.
For more information see Documentation/vm/slub.txt.
slab_max_order= [MM, SLAB]