Adding upstream version 5.10.209.upstream/5.10.209upstream

Signed-off-by: Daniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org>

1 files changed, 100 insertions, 0 deletions

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+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+======================
+Memory Protection Keys
+======================
+
+Memory Protection Keys for Userspace (PKU aka PKEYs) is a feature
+which is found on Intel's Skylake (and later) "Scalable Processor"
+Server CPUs. It will be available in future non-server Intel parts
+and future AMD processors.
+
+For anyone wishing to test or use this feature, it is available in
+Amazon's EC2 C5 instances and is known to work there using an Ubuntu
+17.04 image.
+
+Memory Protection Keys provides a mechanism for enforcing page-based
+protections, but without requiring modification of the page tables
+when an application changes protection domains.  It works by
+dedicating 4 previously ignored bits in each page table entry to a
+"protection key", giving 16 possible keys.
+
+There is also a new user-accessible register (PKRU) with two separate
+bits (Access Disable and Write Disable) for each key.  Being a CPU
+register, PKRU is inherently thread-local, potentially giving each
+thread a different set of protections from every other thread.
+
+There are two new instructions (RDPKRU/WRPKRU) for reading and writing
+to the new register.  The feature is only available in 64-bit mode,
+even though there is theoretically space in the PAE PTEs.  These
+permissions are enforced on data access only and have no effect on
+instruction fetches.
+
+Syscalls
+========
+
+There are 3 system calls which directly interact with pkeys::
+
+	int pkey_alloc(unsigned long flags, unsigned long init_access_rights)
+	int pkey_free(int pkey);
+	int pkey_mprotect(unsigned long start, size_t len,
+			  unsigned long prot, int pkey);
+
+Before a pkey can be used, it must first be allocated with
+pkey_alloc().  An application calls the WRPKRU instruction
+directly in order to change access permissions to memory covered
+with a key.  In this example WRPKRU is wrapped by a C function
+called pkey_set().
+::
+
+	int real_prot = PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE;
+	pkey = pkey_alloc(0, PKEY_DISABLE_WRITE);
+	ptr = mmap(NULL, PAGE_SIZE, PROT_NONE, MAP_ANONYMOUS|MAP_PRIVATE, -1, 0);
+	ret = pkey_mprotect(ptr, PAGE_SIZE, real_prot, pkey);
+	... application runs here
+
+Now, if the application needs to update the data at 'ptr', it can
+gain access, do the update, then remove its write access::
+
+	pkey_set(pkey, 0); // clear PKEY_DISABLE_WRITE
+	*ptr = foo; // assign something
+	pkey_set(pkey, PKEY_DISABLE_WRITE); // set PKEY_DISABLE_WRITE again
+
+Now when it frees the memory, it will also free the pkey since it
+is no longer in use::
+
+	munmap(ptr, PAGE_SIZE);
+	pkey_free(pkey);
+
+.. note:: pkey_set() is a wrapper for the RDPKRU and WRPKRU instructions.
+          An example implementation can be found in
+          tools/testing/selftests/x86/protection_keys.c.
+
+Behavior
+========
+
+The kernel attempts to make protection keys consistent with the
+behavior of a plain mprotect().  For instance if you do this::
+
+	mprotect(ptr, size, PROT_NONE);
+	something(ptr);
+
+you can expect the same effects with protection keys when doing this::
+
+	pkey = pkey_alloc(0, PKEY_DISABLE_WRITE | PKEY_DISABLE_READ);
+	pkey_mprotect(ptr, size, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, pkey);
+	something(ptr);
+
+That should be true whether something() is a direct access to 'ptr'
+like::
+
+	*ptr = foo;
+
+or when the kernel does the access on the application's behalf like
+with a read()::
+
+	read(fd, ptr, 1);
+
+The kernel will send a SIGSEGV in both cases, but si_code will be set
+to SEGV_PKERR when violating protection keys versus SEGV_ACCERR when
+the plain mprotect() permissions are violated.