list: Introduce CONFIG_LIST_HARDENED

Numerous production kernel configs (see [1, 2]) are choosing to enable
CONFIG_DEBUG_LIST, which is also being recommended by KSPP for hardened
configs [3]. The motivation behind this is that the option can be used
as a security hardening feature (e.g. CVE-2019-2215 and CVE-2019-2025
are mitigated by the option [4]).

The feature has never been designed with performance in mind, yet common
list manipulation is happening across hot paths all over the kernel.

Introduce CONFIG_LIST_HARDENED, which performs list pointer checking
inline, and only upon list corruption calls the reporting slow path.

To generate optimal machine code with CONFIG_LIST_HARDENED:

  1. Elide checking for pointer values which upon dereference would
     result in an immediate access fault (i.e. minimal hardening
     checks).  The trade-off is lower-quality error reports.

  2. Use the __preserve_most function attribute (available with Clang,
     but not yet with GCC) to minimize the code footprint for calling
     the reporting slow path. As a result, function size of callers is
     reduced by avoiding saving registers before calling the rarely
     called reporting slow path.

     Note that all TUs in lib/Makefile already disable function tracing,
     including list_debug.c, and __preserve_most's implied notrace has
     no effect in this case.

  3. Because the inline checks are a subset of the full set of checks in
     __list_*_valid_or_report(), always return false if the inline
     checks failed.  This avoids redundant compare and conditional
     branch right after return from the slow path.

As a side-effect of the checks being inline, if the compiler can prove
some condition to always be true, it can completely elide some checks.

Since DEBUG_LIST is functionally a superset of LIST_HARDENED, the
Kconfig variables are changed to reflect that: DEBUG_LIST selects
LIST_HARDENED, whereas LIST_HARDENED itself has no dependency on
DEBUG_LIST.

Running netperf with CONFIG_LIST_HARDENED (using a Clang compiler with
"preserve_most") shows throughput improvements, in my case of ~7% on
average (up to 20-30% on some test cases).

Link: https://r.android.com/1266735 [1]
Link: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/linux/-/blob/main/config [2]
Link: https://kernsec.org/wiki/index.php/Kernel_Self_Protection_Project/Recommended_Settings [3]
Link: https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2019/11/bad-binder-android-in-wild-exploit.html [4]
Signed-off-by: Marco Elver <elver@google.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20230811151847.1594958-3-elver@google.com
Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>

1 files changed, 2 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/drivers/misc/lkdtm/bugs.c b/drivers/misc/lkdtm/bugs.c
index 3c95600ab2f71b..963b4dee6a7d68 100644
--- a/drivers/misc/lkdtm/bugs.c
+++ b/drivers/misc/lkdtm/bugs.c
@@ -393,7 +393,7 @@ static void lkdtm_CORRUPT_LIST_ADD(void)
 		pr_err("Overwrite did not happen, but no BUG?!\n");
 	else {
 		pr_err("list_add() corruption not detected!\n");
-		pr_expected_config(CONFIG_DEBUG_LIST);
+		pr_expected_config(CONFIG_LIST_HARDENED);
 	}
 }
 
@@ -420,7 +420,7 @@ static void lkdtm_CORRUPT_LIST_DEL(void)
 		pr_err("Overwrite did not happen, but no BUG?!\n");
 	else {
 		pr_err("list_del() corruption not detected!\n");
-		pr_expected_config(CONFIG_DEBUG_LIST);
+		pr_expected_config(CONFIG_LIST_HARDENED);
 	}
 }