[099/114] mm: optimize do_wp_page() for exclusive pages in the swapcache

Commit Message

Andrew Morton March 25, 2022, 1:13 a.m. UTC

From: David Hildenbrand <[e-mail]>
Subject: mm: optimize do_wp_page() for exclusive pages in the swapcache

Patch series "mm: COW fixes part 1: fix the COW security issue for THP and swap", v3.

This series attempts to optimize and streamline the COW logic for ordinary
anon pages and THP anon pages, fixing two remaining instances of
CVE-2020-29374 in do_swap_page() and do_huge_pmd_wp_page(): information
can leak from a parent process to a child process via anonymous pages
shared during fork().

This issue, including other related COW issues, has been summarized in [2]:
"
  1. Observing Memory Modifications of Private Pages From A Child Process

  Long story short: process-private memory might not be as private as you
  think once you fork(): successive modifications of private memory
  regions in the parent process can still be observed by the child
  process, for example, by smart use of vmsplice()+munmap().

  The core problem is that pinning pages readable in a child process, such
  as done via the vmsplice system call, can result in a child process
  observing memory modifications done in the parent process the child is
  not supposed to observe. [1] contains an excellent summary and [2]
  contains further details. This issue was assigned CVE-2020-29374 [9].

  For this to trigger, it's required to use a fork() without subsequent
  exec(), for example, as used under Android zygote. Without further
  details about an application that forks less-privileged child processes,
  one cannot really say what's actually affected and what's not -- see the
  details section the end of this mail for a short sshd/openssh analysis.

  While commit 17839856fd58 ("gup: document and work around "COW can break
  either way" issue") fixed this issue and resulted in other problems
  (e.g., ptrace on pmem), commit 09854ba94c6a ("mm: do_wp_page()
  simplification") re-introduced part of the problem unfortunately.

  The original reproducer can be modified quite easily to use THP [3] and
  make the issue appear again on upstream kernels. I modified it to use
  hugetlb [4] and it triggers as well. The problem is certainly less
  severe with hugetlb than with THP; it merely highlights that we still
  have plenty of open holes we should be closing/fixing.

  Regarding vmsplice(), the only known workaround is to disallow the
  vmsplice() system call ... or disable THP and hugetlb. But who knows
  what else is affected (RDMA? O_DIRECT?) to achieve the same goal -- in
  the end, it's a more generic issue.
"

This security issue was first reported by Jann Horn on 27 May 2020 and it
currently affects anonymous pages during swapin, anonymous THP and hugetlb.
This series tackles anonymous pages during swapin and anonymous THP:
* do_swap_page() for handling COW on PTEs during swapin directly
* do_huge_pmd_wp_page() for handling COW on PMD-mapped THP during write
  faults

With this series, we'll apply the same COW logic we have in do_wp_page()
to all swappable anon pages: don't reuse (map writable) the page in
case there are additional references (page_count() != 1). All users of
reuse_swap_page() are remove, and consequently reuse_swap_page() is
removed.

In general, we're struggling with the following COW-related issues:
(1) "missed COW": we miss to copy on write and reuse the page (map it
    writable) although we must copy because there are pending references
    from another process to this page. The result is a security issue.
(2) "wrong COW": we copy on write although we wouldn't have to and
    shouldn't: if there are valid GUP references, they will become out of
    sync with the pages mapped into the page table. We fail to detect that
    such a page can be reused safely, especially if never more than a
    single process mapped the page. The result is an intra process
    memory corruption.
(3) "unnecessary COW": we copy on write although we wouldn't have to:
    performance degradation and temporary increases swap+memory consumption
    can be the result.

While this series fixes (1) for swappable anon pages, it tries to reduce
reported cases of (3) first as good and easy as possible to limit the
impact when streamlining. The individual patches try to describe in which
cases we will run into (3).

This series certainly makes (2) worse for THP, because a THP will now get
PTE-mapped on write faults if there are additional references, even if
there was only ever a single process involved: once PTE-mapped, we'll copy
each and every subpage and won't reuse any subpage as long as the
underlying compound page wasn't split.

I'm working on an approach to fix (2) and improve (3): PageAnonExclusive to
mark anon pages that are exclusive to a single process, allow GUP pins only
on such exclusive pages, and allow turning exclusive pages shared
(clearing PageAnonExclusive) only if there are no GUP pins. Anon pages with
PageAnonExclusive set never have to be copied during write faults, but
eventually during fork() if they cannot be turned shared. The improved
reuse logic in this series will essentially also be the logic to reset
PageAnonExclusive. This work will certainly take a while, but I'm planning
on sharing details before having code fully ready.


#1-#5 can be applied independently of the rest. #6-#9 are mostly only
cleanups related to reuse_swap_page().


Notes:
* For now, I'll leave hugetlb code untouched: "unnecessary COW" might
  easily break existing setups because hugetlb pages are a scarce resource
  and we could just end up having to crash the application when we run out
  of hugetlb pages. We have to be very careful and the security aspect with
  hugetlb is most certainly less relevant than for unprivileged anon pages.
* Instead of lru_add_drain() we might actually just drain the lru_add list
  or even just remove the single page of interest from the lru_add list.
  This would require a new helper function, and could be added if the
  conditional lru_add_drain() turn out to be a problem.
* I extended the test case already included in [1] to also test for the
  newly found do_swap_page() case. I'll send that out separately once/if
  this part was merged.

[1] https://lkml.kernel.org/r/[e-mail]
[2] https://lore.kernel.org/r/[e-mail]


This patch (of 9):

Liang Zhang reported [1] that the current COW logic in do_wp_page() is
sub-optimal when it comes to swap+read fault+write fault of anonymous
pages that have a single user, visible via a performance degradation in
the redis benchmark.  Something similar was previously reported [2] by
Nadav with a simple reproducer.

After we put an anon page into the swapcache and unmapped it from a single
process, that process might read that page again and refault it read-only.
If that process then writes to that page, the process is actually the
exclusive user of the page, however, the COW logic in do_co_page() won't
be able to reuse it due to the additional reference from the swapcache.

Let's optimize for pages that have been added to the swapcache but only
have an exclusive user.  Try removing the swapcache reference if there is
hope that we're the exclusive user.

We will fail removing the swapcache reference in two scenarios:
(1) There are additional swap entries referencing the page: copying
    instead of reusing is the right thing to do.
(2) The page is under writeback: theoretically we might be able to reuse
    in some cases, however, we cannot remove the additional reference
    and will have to copy.

Note that we'll only try removing the page from the swapcache when it's
highly likely that we'll be the exclusive owner after removing the page
from the swapache.  As we're about to map that page writable and redirty
it, that should not affect reclaim but is rather the right thing to do.

Further, we might have additional references from the LRU pagevecs, which
will force us to copy instead of being able to reuse.  We'll try handling
such references for some scenarios next.  Concurrent writeback cannot be
handled easily and we'll always have to copy.

While at it, remove the superfluous page_mapcount() check: it's
implicitly covered by the page_count() for ordinary anon pages.

[1] https://lkml.kernel.org/r/[e-mail]
[2] https://lkml.kernel.org/r/[e-mail]

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/[e-mail]
Signed-off-by: David Hildenbrand <[e-mail]>
Reported-by: Liang Zhang <[e-mail]>
Reported-by: Nadav Amit <[e-mail]>
Reviewed-by: Matthew Wilcox (Oracle) <[e-mail]>
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka <[e-mail]>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <[e-mail]>
Cc: David Rientjes <[e-mail]>
Cc: Shakeel Butt <[e-mail]>
Cc: John Hubbard <[e-mail]>
Cc: Jason Gunthorpe <[e-mail]>
Cc: Mike Kravetz <[e-mail]>
Cc: Mike Rapoport <[e-mail]>
Cc: Yang Shi <[e-mail]>
Cc: Kirill A. Shutemov <[e-mail]>
Cc: Jann Horn <[e-mail]>
Cc: Michal Hocko <[e-mail]>
Cc: Rik van Riel <[e-mail]>
Cc: Roman Gushchin <[e-mail]>
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <[e-mail]>
Cc: Peter Xu <[e-mail]>
Cc: Don Dutile <[e-mail]>
Cc: Christoph Hellwig <[e-mail]>
Cc: Oleg Nesterov <[e-mail]>
Cc: Jan Kara <[e-mail]>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <[e-mail]>
---

 mm/memory.c |   20 ++++++++++++++------
 1 file changed, 14 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)

Patch

--- a/mm/memory.c~mm-optimize-do_wp_page-for-exclusive-pages-in-the-swapcache
+++ a/mm/memory.c
@@ -3287,19 +3287,27 @@  static vm_fault_t do_wp_page(struct vm_f
 	if (PageAnon(vmf->page)) {
 		struct page *page = vmf->page;
 
-		/* PageKsm() doesn't necessarily raise the page refcount */
-		if (PageKsm(page) || page_count(page) != 1)
+		/*
+		 * We have to verify under page lock: these early checks are
+		 * just an optimization to avoid locking the page and freeing
+		 * the swapcache if there is little hope that we can reuse.
+		 *
+		 * PageKsm() doesn't necessarily raise the page refcount.
+		 */
+		if (PageKsm(page) || page_count(page) > 1 + PageSwapCache(page))
 			goto copy;
 		if (!trylock_page(page))
 			goto copy;
-		if (PageKsm(page) || page_mapcount(page) != 1 || page_count(page) != 1) {
+		if (PageSwapCache(page))
+			try_to_free_swap(page);
+		if (PageKsm(page) || page_count(page) != 1) {
 			unlock_page(page);
 			goto copy;
 		}
 		/*
-		 * Ok, we've got the only map reference, and the only
-		 * page count reference, and the page is locked,
-		 * it's dark out, and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.
+		 * Ok, we've got the only page reference from our mapping
+		 * and the page is locked, it's dark out, and we're wearing
+		 * sunglasses. Hit it.
 		 */
 		unlock_page(page);
 		wp_page_reuse(vmf);