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authorPeter Collingbourne <pcc@google.com>2021-03-18 20:10:53 -0700
committerCatalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>2021-04-13 17:31:44 +0100
commit201698626fbca1cf1a3b686ba14cf2a056500716 (patch)
tree84e0f6591d4d0f3ea2052cc36ad797194f071b44 /Documentation/arm64
parent2f79d2fc391e4ba64df908b8c07dda6c3a907056 (diff)
arm64: Introduce prctl(PR_PAC_{SET,GET}_ENABLED_KEYS)
This change introduces a prctl that allows the user program to control which PAC keys are enabled in a particular task. The main reason why this is useful is to enable a userspace ABI that uses PAC to sign and authenticate function pointers and other pointers exposed outside of the function, while still allowing binaries conforming to the ABI to interoperate with legacy binaries that do not sign or authenticate pointers. The idea is that a dynamic loader or early startup code would issue this prctl very early after establishing that a process may load legacy binaries, but before executing any PAC instructions. This change adds a small amount of overhead to kernel entry and exit due to additional required instruction sequences. On a DragonBoard 845c (Cortex-A75) with the powersave governor, the overhead of similar instruction sequences was measured as 4.9ns when simulating the common case where IA is left enabled, or 43.7ns when simulating the uncommon case where IA is disabled. These numbers can be seen as the worst case scenario, since in more realistic scenarios a better performing governor would be used and a newer chip would be used that would support PAC unlike Cortex-A75 and would be expected to be faster than Cortex-A75. On an Apple M1 under a hypervisor, the overhead of the entry/exit instruction sequences introduced by this patch was measured as 0.3ns in the case where IA is left enabled, and 33.0ns in the case where IA is disabled. Signed-off-by: Peter Collingbourne <pcc@google.com> Reviewed-by: Dave Martin <Dave.Martin@arm.com> Link: https://linux-review.googlesource.com/id/Ibc41a5e6a76b275efbaa126b31119dc197b927a5 Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/d6609065f8f40397a4124654eb68c9f490b4d477.1616123271.git.pcc@google.com Signed-off-by: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/arm64')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/arm64/pointer-authentication.rst34
1 files changed, 34 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/arm64/pointer-authentication.rst b/Documentation/arm64/pointer-authentication.rst
index 30b2ab06526b..f127666ea3a8 100644
--- a/Documentation/arm64/pointer-authentication.rst
+++ b/Documentation/arm64/pointer-authentication.rst
@@ -107,3 +107,37 @@ filter out the Pointer Authentication system key registers from
KVM_GET/SET_REG_* ioctls and mask those features from cpufeature ID
register. Any attempt to use the Pointer Authentication instructions will
result in an UNDEFINED exception being injected into the guest.
+
+
+Enabling and disabling keys
+---------------------------
+
+The prctl PR_PAC_SET_ENABLED_KEYS allows the user program to control which
+PAC keys are enabled in a particular task. It takes two arguments, the
+first being a bitmask of PR_PAC_APIAKEY, PR_PAC_APIBKEY, PR_PAC_APDAKEY
+and PR_PAC_APDBKEY specifying which keys shall be affected by this prctl,
+and the second being a bitmask of the same bits specifying whether the key
+should be enabled or disabled. For example::
+
+ prctl(PR_PAC_SET_ENABLED_KEYS,
+ PR_PAC_APIAKEY | PR_PAC_APIBKEY | PR_PAC_APDAKEY | PR_PAC_APDBKEY,
+ PR_PAC_APIBKEY, 0, 0);
+
+disables all keys except the IB key.
+
+The main reason why this is useful is to enable a userspace ABI that uses PAC
+instructions to sign and authenticate function pointers and other pointers
+exposed outside of the function, while still allowing binaries conforming to
+the ABI to interoperate with legacy binaries that do not sign or authenticate
+pointers.
+
+The idea is that a dynamic loader or early startup code would issue this
+prctl very early after establishing that a process may load legacy binaries,
+but before executing any PAC instructions.
+
+For compatibility with previous kernel versions, processes start up with IA,
+IB, DA and DB enabled, and are reset to this state on exec(). Processes created
+via fork() and clone() inherit the key enabled state from the calling process.
+
+It is recommended to avoid disabling the IA key, as this has higher performance
+overhead than disabling any of the other keys.