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arm64/bti: Disable in kernel BTI when cross section thunks are broken

PATCH Applied Mark Brown 2 participants 2 messages Sep 5, 2022 – Sep 6, 2022 arm64

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Mark Brown

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PATCH v2 1/1 arm64/bti: Disable in kernel BTI when cross section thunks are broken

GCC does not insert a bti c instruction at the beginning of a function when it believes that all callers reach the function through a direct branch[1]. Unfortunately the logic it uses to determine this is not sufficiently robust, for example not taking account of functions being placed in different sections which may be loaded separately, so we may still see thunks being generated to these functions. If that happens, the first instruction in the callee function will result in a Branch Target Exception due to the missing landing pad.

While this has currently only been observed in the case of modules having their main code loaded sufficiently far from their init section to require thunks it could potentially happen for other cases so the safest thing is to disable BTI for the kernel when building with an affected toolchain.

[1]: https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=106671

[Bits of the commit message are lifted from his report & workaround]

---

v2:
- Leave the check for the older GCC bug in place for documentation purposes.

 arch/arm64/Kconfig | 2 ++
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+)
arch/arm64/Kconfig +2 -0
index 9fb9fff08c94..1ce7685ad5de 100644
@@ -1887,6 +1887,8 @@ config ARM64_BTI_KERNEL
 	depends on CC_HAS_BRANCH_PROT_PAC_RET_BTI
 	# https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=94697
 	depends on !CC_IS_GCC || GCC_VERSION >= 100100
+	# https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=106671
+	depends on !CC_IS_GCC
 	# https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/commit/a88c722e687e6780dcd6a58718350dc76fcc4cc9
 	depends on !CC_IS_CLANG || CLANG_VERSION >= 120000
 	depends on (!FUNCTION_GRAPH_TRACER || DYNAMIC_FTRACE_WITH_REGS)
Signature · 7 lines
2.30.2


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#1 lore raw
Quoted 10 lines · Mark Brown

GCC does not insert a bti c instruction at the beginning of a function when it believes that all callers reach the function through a direct branch[1]. Unfortunately the logic it uses to determine this is not sufficiently robust, for example not taking account of functions being placed in different sections which may be loaded separately, so we may still see thunks being generated to these functions. If that happens, the first instruction in the callee function will result in a Branch Target Exception due to the missing landing pad.

[...]

Applied to arm64 (for-next/fixes), thanks!

[1/1] arm64/bti: Disable in kernel BTI when cross section thunks are broken

      https://git.kernel.org/arm64/c/c0a454b9044f

Cheers,

Signature · 10 lines
Will

https://fixes.arm64.dev
https://next.arm64.dev
https://will.arm64.dev

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