Linux kernel modifications for the Kernel Hacking exam
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Chris von Recklinghausen b5cb15d937 usercopy: Allow boot cmdline disabling of hardening
Enabling HARDENED_USERCOPY may cause measurable regressions in networking
performance: up to 8% under UDP flood.

I ran a small packet UDP flood using pktgen vs. a host b2b connected. On
the receiver side the UDP packets are processed by a simple user space
process that just reads and drops them:

https://github.com/netoptimizer/network-testing/blob/master/src/udp_sink.c

Not very useful from a functional PoV, but it helps to pin-point
bottlenecks in the networking stack.

When running a kernel with CONFIG_HARDENED_USERCOPY=y, I see a 5-8%
regression in the receive tput, compared to the same kernel without this
option enabled.

With CONFIG_HARDENED_USERCOPY=y, perf shows ~6% of CPU time spent
cumulatively in __check_object_size (~4%) and __virt_addr_valid (~2%).

The call-chain is:

__GI___libc_recvfrom
entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe
do_syscall_64
__x64_sys_recvfrom
__sys_recvfrom
inet_recvmsg
udp_recvmsg
__check_object_size

udp_recvmsg() actually calls copy_to_iter() (inlined) and the latters
calls check_copy_size() (again, inlined).

A generic distro may want to enable HARDENED_USERCOPY in their default
kernel config, but at the same time, such distro may want to be able to
avoid the performance penalties in with the default configuration and
disable the stricter check on a per-boot basis.

This change adds a boot parameter that conditionally disables
HARDENED_USERCOPY via "hardened_usercopy=off".

Signed-off-by: Chris von Recklinghausen <crecklin@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
2018-07-04 08:04:52 -07:00
arch Merge branch 'perf-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2018-06-24 20:29:15 +08:00
block for-linus-20180623 2018-06-24 06:33:54 +08:00
certs docs: Fix some broken references 2018-06-15 18:10:01 -03:00
crypto Merge branch 'linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/herbert/crypto-2.6 2018-06-24 06:31:54 +08:00
Documentation usercopy: Allow boot cmdline disabling of hardening 2018-07-04 08:04:52 -07:00
drivers Merge branch 'efi-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2018-06-24 20:16:17 +08:00
firmware
fs \n 2018-06-22 18:04:56 +09:00
include usercopy: Allow boot cmdline disabling of hardening 2018-07-04 08:04:52 -07:00
init dma-mapping: move all DMA mapping code to kernel/dma 2018-06-14 08:50:37 +02:00
ipc ipc: use new return type vm_fault_t 2018-06-15 07:55:25 +09:00
kernel Merge branch 'perf-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2018-06-24 20:29:15 +08:00
lib Merge branch 'locking-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2018-06-24 19:36:16 +08:00
LICENSES LICENSES: Add Linux-OpenIB license text 2018-04-27 16:41:53 -06:00
mm usercopy: Allow boot cmdline disabling of hardening 2018-07-04 08:04:52 -07:00
net NFS client bugfixes for Linux 4.18 2018-06-22 06:21:34 +09:00
samples VFIO updates for v4.18 2018-06-12 13:11:26 -07:00
scripts tracing: Fix SKIP_STACK_VALIDATION=1 build due to bad merge with -mrecord-mcount 2018-06-21 15:12:56 -04:00
security usercopy: Do not select BUG with HARDENED_USERCOPY 2018-07-02 17:21:26 -07:00
sound docs: Fix some broken references 2018-06-15 18:10:01 -03:00
tools Merge branch 'perf-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2018-06-24 20:29:15 +08:00
usr
virt KVM: arm64: Prevent KVM_COMPAT from being selected 2018-06-21 17:17:50 +01:00
.clang-format
.cocciconfig
.get_maintainer.ignore
.gitattributes
.gitignore Kbuild updates for v4.17 (2nd) 2018-04-15 17:21:30 -07:00
.mailmap Merge branch 'asoc-4.17' into asoc-4.18 for compress dependencies 2018-04-26 12:24:28 +01:00
COPYING
CREDITS
Kbuild
Kconfig kconfig: add basic helper macros to scripts/Kconfig.include 2018-05-29 03:31:19 +09:00
MAINTAINERS Merge branch 'x86-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2018-06-24 19:59:52 +08:00
Makefile Linux 4.18-rc2 2018-06-24 20:54:29 +08:00
README

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.