kernel/linux.git/mm/memfd.c, branch v6.6.131

mm: reinstate ability to map write-sealed memfd mappings read-only

2025-08-28T14:28:39+00:00

From: Lorenzo Stoakes [ Upstream commit 8ec396d05d1b737c87311fb7311f753b02c2a6b1 ] Patch series "mm: reinstate ability to map write-sealed memfd mappings read-only". In commit 158978945f31 ("mm: perform the mapping_map_writable() check after call_mmap()") (and preceding changes in the same series) it became possible to mmap() F_SEAL_WRITE sealed memfd mappings read-only. Commit 5de195060b2e ("mm: resolve faulty mmap_region() error path behaviour") unintentionally undid this logic by moving the mapping_map_writable() check before the shmem_mmap() hook is invoked, thereby regressing this change. This series reworks how we both permit write-sealed mappings being mapped read-only and disallow mprotect() from undoing the write-seal, fixing this regression. We also add a regression test to ensure that we do not accidentally regress this in future. Thanks to Julian Orth for reporting this regression. This patch (of 2): In commit 158978945f31 ("mm: perform the mapping_map_writable() check after call_mmap()") (and preceding changes in the same series) it became possible to mmap() F_SEAL_WRITE sealed memfd mappings read-only. This was previously unnecessarily disallowed, despite the man page documentation indicating that it would be, thereby limiting the usefulness of F_SEAL_WRITE logic. We fixed this by adapting logic that existed for the F_SEAL_FUTURE_WRITE seal (one which disallows future writes to the memfd) to also be used for F_SEAL_WRITE. For background - the F_SEAL_FUTURE_WRITE seal clears VM_MAYWRITE for a read-only mapping to disallow mprotect() from overriding the seal - an operation performed by seal_check_write(), invoked from shmem_mmap(), the f_op->mmap() hook used by shmem mappings. By extending this to F_SEAL_WRITE and critically - checking mapping_map_writable() to determine if we may map the memfd AFTER we invoke shmem_mmap() - the desired logic becomes possible. This is because mapping_map_writable() explicitly checks for VM_MAYWRITE, which we will have cleared. Commit 5de195060b2e ("mm: resolve faulty mmap_region() error path behaviour") unintentionally undid this logic by moving the mapping_map_writable() check before the shmem_mmap() hook is invoked, thereby regressing this change. We reinstate this functionality by moving the check out of shmem_mmap() and instead performing it in do_mmap() at the point at which VMA flags are being determined, which seems in any case to be a more appropriate place in which to make this determination. In order to achieve this we rework memfd seal logic to allow us access to this information using existing logic and eliminate the clearing of VM_MAYWRITE from seal_check_write() which we are performing in do_mmap() instead. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/99fc35d2c62bd2e05571cf60d9f8b843c56069e0.1732804776.git.lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com Fixes: 5de195060b2e ("mm: resolve faulty mmap_region() error path behaviour") Signed-off-by: Lorenzo Stoakes Reported-by: Julian Orth Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAHijbEUMhvJTN9Xw1GmbM266FXXv=U7s4L_Jem5x3AaPZxrYpQ@mail.gmail.com/ Cc: Jann Horn Cc: Liam R. Howlett Cc: Linus Torvalds Cc: Shuah Khan Cc: Vlastimil Babka Cc: Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Isaac J. Manjarres Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman

revert "memfd: improve userspace warnings for missing exec-related flags".

2023-09-05T18:11:52+00:00

This warning is telling userspace developers to pass MFD_EXEC and MFD_NOEXEC_SEAL to memfd_create(). Commit 434ed3350f57 ("memfd: improve userspace warnings for missing exec-related flags") made the warning more frequent and visible in the hope that this would accelerate the fixing of errant userspace. But the overall effect is to generate far too much dmesg noise. Fixes: 434ed3350f57 ("memfd: improve userspace warnings for missing exec-related flags") Reported-by: Damian Tometzki Closes: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/ZPFzCSIgZ4QuHsSC@fedora.fritz.box Cc: Aleksa Sarai Cc: Christian Brauner Cc: Daniel Verkamp Cc: Jeff Xu Cc: Kees Cook Cc: Shuah Khan Cc: Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

memfd: replace ratcheting feature from vm.memfd_noexec with hierarchy

2023-08-21T20:37:59+00:00

This sysctl has the very unusual behaviour of not allowing any user (even CAP_SYS_ADMIN) to reduce the restriction setting, meaning that if you were to set this sysctl to a more restrictive option in the host pidns you would need to reboot your machine in order to reset it. The justification given in [1] is that this is a security feature and thus it should not be possible to disable. Aside from the fact that we have plenty of security-related sysctls that can be disabled after being enabled (fs.protected_symlinks for instance), the protection provided by the sysctl is to stop users from being able to create a binary and then execute it. A user with CAP_SYS_ADMIN can trivially do this without memfd_create(2): % cat mount-memfd.c #include #include #include #include #include #include #define SHELLCODE "#!/bin/echo this file was executed from this totally private tmpfs:" int main(void) { int fsfd = fsopen("tmpfs", FSOPEN_CLOEXEC); assert(fsfd >= 0); assert(!fsconfig(fsfd, FSCONFIG_CMD_CREATE, NULL, NULL, 2)); int dfd = fsmount(fsfd, FSMOUNT_CLOEXEC, 0); assert(dfd >= 0); int execfd = openat(dfd, "exe", O_CREAT | O_RDWR | O_CLOEXEC, 0782); assert(execfd >= 0); assert(write(execfd, SHELLCODE, strlen(SHELLCODE)) == strlen(SHELLCODE)); assert(!close(execfd)); char *execpath = NULL; char *argv[] = { "bad-exe", NULL }, *envp[] = { NULL }; execfd = openat(dfd, "exe", O_PATH | O_CLOEXEC); assert(execfd >= 0); assert(asprintf(&execpath, "/proc/self/fd/%d", execfd) > 0); assert(!execve(execpath, argv, envp)); } % ./mount-memfd this file was executed from this totally private tmpfs: /proc/self/fd/5 % Given that it is possible for CAP_SYS_ADMIN users to create executable binaries without memfd_create(2) and without touching the host filesystem (not to mention the many other things a CAP_SYS_ADMIN process would be able to do that would be equivalent or worse), it seems strange to cause a fair amount of headache to admins when there doesn't appear to be an actual security benefit to blocking this. There appear to be concerns about confused-deputy-esque attacks[2] but a confused deputy that can write to arbitrary sysctls is a bigger security issue than executable memfds. /* New API */ The primary requirement from the original author appears to be more based on the need to be able to restrict an entire system in a hierarchical manner[3], such that child namespaces cannot re-enable executable memfds. So, implement that behaviour explicitly -- the vm.memfd_noexec scope is evaluated up the pidns tree to &init_pid_ns and you have the most restrictive value applied to you. The new lower limit you can set vm.memfd_noexec is whatever limit applies to your parent. Note that a pidns will inherit a copy of the parent pidns's effective vm.memfd_noexec setting at unshare() time. This matches the existing behaviour, and it also ensures that a pidns will never have its vm.memfd_noexec setting *lowered* behind its back (but it will be raised if the parent raises theirs). /* Backwards Compatibility */ As the previous version of the sysctl didn't allow you to lower the setting at all, there are no backwards compatibility issues with this aspect of the change. However it should be noted that now that the setting is completely hierarchical. Previously, a cloned pidns would just copy the current pidns setting, meaning that if the parent's vm.memfd_noexec was changed it wouldn't propoagate to existing pid namespaces. Now, the restriction applies recursively. This is a uAPI change, however: * The sysctl is very new, having been merged in 6.3. * Several aspects of the sysctl were broken up until this patchset and the other patchset by Jeff Xu last month. And thus it seems incredibly unlikely that any real users would run into this issue. In the worst case, if this causes userspace isues we could make it so that modifying the setting follows the hierarchical rules but the restriction checking uses the cached copy. [1]: https://lore.kernel.org/CABi2SkWnAgHK1i6iqSqPMYuNEhtHBkO8jUuCvmG3RmUB5TKHJw@mail.gmail.com/ [2]: https://lore.kernel.org/CALmYWFs_dNCzw_pW1yRAo4bGCPEtykroEQaowNULp7svwMLjOg@mail.gmail.com/ [3]: https://lore.kernel.org/CALmYWFuahdUF7cT4cm7_TGLqPanuHXJ-hVSfZt7vpTnc18DPrw@mail.gmail.com/ Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20230814-memfd-vm-noexec-uapi-fixes-v2-4-7ff9e3e10ba6@cyphar.com Fixes: 105ff5339f49 ("mm/memfd: add MFD_NOEXEC_SEAL and MFD_EXEC") Signed-off-by: Aleksa Sarai Cc: Dominique Martinet Cc: Christian Brauner Cc: Daniel Verkamp Cc: Jeff Xu Cc: Kees Cook Cc: Shuah Khan Cc: Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

memfd: improve userspace warnings for missing exec-related flags

2023-08-21T20:37:59+00:00

In order to incentivise userspace to switch to passing MFD_EXEC and MFD_NOEXEC_SEAL, we need to provide a warning on each attempt to call memfd_create() without the new flags. pr_warn_once() is not useful because on most systems the one warning is burned up during the boot process (on my system, systemd does this within the first second of boot) and thus userspace will in practice never see the warnings to push them to switch to the new flags. The original patchset[1] used pr_warn_ratelimited(), however there were concerns about the degree of spam in the kernel log[2,3]. The resulting inability to detect every case was flagged as an issue at the time[4]. While we could come up with an alternative rate-limiting scheme such as only outputting the message if vm.memfd_noexec has been modified, or only outputting the message once for a given task, these alternatives have downsides that don't make sense given how low-stakes a single kernel warning message is. Switching to pr_info_ratelimited() instead should be fine -- it's possible some monitoring tool will be unhappy with a stream of warning-level messages but there's already plenty of info-level message spam in dmesg. [1]: https://lore.kernel.org/20221215001205.51969-4-jeffxu@google.com/ [2]: https://lore.kernel.org/202212161233.85C9783FB@keescook/ [3]: https://lore.kernel.org/Y5yS8wCnuYGLHMj4@x1n/ [4]: https://lore.kernel.org/f185bb42-b29c-977e-312e-3349eea15383@linuxfoundation.org/ Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20230814-memfd-vm-noexec-uapi-fixes-v2-3-7ff9e3e10ba6@cyphar.com Fixes: 105ff5339f49 ("mm/memfd: add MFD_NOEXEC_SEAL and MFD_EXEC") Signed-off-by: Aleksa Sarai Cc: Christian Brauner Cc: Daniel Verkamp Cc: Dominique Martinet Cc: Kees Cook Cc: Shuah Khan Cc: Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

memfd: do not -EACCES old memfd_create() users with vm.memfd_noexec=2

2023-08-21T20:37:59+00:00

Given the difficulty of auditing all of userspace to figure out whether every memfd_create() user has switched to passing MFD_EXEC and MFD_NOEXEC_SEAL flags, it seems far less distruptive to make it possible for older programs that don't make use of executable memfds to run under vm.memfd_noexec=2. Otherwise, a small dependency change can result in spurious errors. For programs that don't use executable memfds, passing MFD_NOEXEC_SEAL is functionally a no-op and thus having the same In addition, every failure under vm.memfd_noexec=2 needs to print to the kernel log so that userspace can figure out where the error came from. The concerns about pr_warn_ratelimited() spam that caused the switch to pr_warn_once()[1,2] do not apply to the vm.memfd_noexec=2 case. This is a user-visible API change, but as it allows programs to do something that would be blocked before, and the sysctl itself was broken and recently released, it seems unlikely this will cause any issues. [1]: https://lore.kernel.org/Y5yS8wCnuYGLHMj4@x1n/ [2]: https://lore.kernel.org/202212161233.85C9783FB@keescook/ Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20230814-memfd-vm-noexec-uapi-fixes-v2-2-7ff9e3e10ba6@cyphar.com Fixes: 105ff5339f49 ("mm/memfd: add MFD_NOEXEC_SEAL and MFD_EXEC") Signed-off-by: Aleksa Sarai Cc: Dominique Martinet Cc: Christian Brauner Cc: Daniel Verkamp Cc: Jeff Xu Cc: Kees Cook Cc: Shuah Khan Cc: Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

mm/memfd: sysctl: fix MEMFD_NOEXEC_SCOPE_NOEXEC_ENFORCED

2023-08-18T17:12:11+00:00

Patch series "mm/memfd: fix sysctl MEMFD_NOEXEC_SCOPE_NOEXEC_ENFORCED", v2. When sysctl vm.memfd_noexec is 2 (MEMFD_NOEXEC_SCOPE_NOEXEC_ENFORCED), memfd_create(.., MFD_EXEC) should fail. This complies with how MEMFD_NOEXEC_SCOPE_NOEXEC_ENFORCED is defined - "memfd_create() without MFD_NOEXEC_SEAL will be rejected" Thanks to Dominique Martinet who reported the bug. see [1] for context. [1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/CABi2SkXUX_QqTQ10Yx9bBUGpN1wByOi_=gZU6WEy5a8MaQY3Jw@mail.gmail.com/T/ This patch (of 2): When vm.memfd_noexec is 2 (MEMFD_NOEXEC_SCOPE_NOEXEC_ENFORCED), memfd_create(.., MFD_EXEC) should fail. This complies with how MEMFD_NOEXEC_SCOPE_NOEXEC_ENFORCED is defined - "memfd_create() without MFD_NOEXEC_SEAL will be rejected" Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20230705063315.3680666-1-jeffxu@google.com Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20230705063315.3680666-2-jeffxu@google.com Fixes: 105ff5339f49 ("mm/memfd: add MFD_NOEXEC_SEAL and MFD_EXEC") Reported-by: Dominique Martinet Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/CABi2SkXUX_QqTQ10Yx9bBUGpN1wByOi_=gZU6WEy5a8MaQY3Jw@mail.gmail.com/T/ Reported-by: kernel test robot Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/oe-kbuild-all/202306301351.kkbSegQW-lkp@intel.com/ Signed-off-by: Jeff Xu Cc: Daniel Verkamp Cc: Dmitry Torokhov Cc: Hugh Dickins Cc: Jann Horn Cc: Jorge Lucangeli Obes Cc: Kees Cook Cc: Shuah Khan Cc: Mike Kravetz Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

memfd: check for non-NULL file_seals in memfd_create() syscall

2023-06-19T20:19:31+00:00

Ensure that file_seals is non-NULL before using it in the memfd_create() syscall. One situation in which memfd_file_seals_ptr() could return a NULL pointer when CONFIG_SHMEM=n, oopsing the kernel. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20230607132427.2867435-1-roberto.sassu@huaweicloud.com Fixes: 47b9012ecdc7 ("shmem: add sealing support to hugetlb-backed memfd") Signed-off-by: Roberto Sassu Cc: Marc-Andr Lureau Cc: Mike Kravetz Cc: Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

memfd: pass argument of memfd_fcntl as int

2023-04-18T23:30:11+00:00

The interface for fcntl expects the argument passed for the command F_ADD_SEALS to be of type int. The current code wrongly treats it as a long. In order to avoid access to undefined bits, we should explicitly cast the argument to int. This commit changes the signature of all the related and helper functions so that they treat the argument as int instead of long. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20230414152459.816046-5-Luca.Vizzarro@arm.com Signed-off-by: Luca Vizzarro Cc: Alexander Viro Cc: Christian Brauner Cc: Jeff Layton Cc: Chuck Lever Cc: Kevin Brodsky Cc: Vincenzo Frascino Cc: Szabolcs Nagy Cc: "Theodore Ts'o" Cc: David Laight Cc: Mark Rutland Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

mm/memfd: add write seals when apply SEAL_EXEC to executable memfd

2023-01-19T01:12:37+00:00

In order to avoid WX mappings, add F_SEAL_WRITE when apply F_SEAL_EXEC to an executable memfd, so W^X from start. This implys application need to fill the content of the memfd first, after F_SEAL_EXEC is applied, application can no longer modify the content of the memfd. Typically, application seals the memfd right after writing to it. For example: 1. memfd_create(MFD_EXEC). 2. write() code to the memfd. 3. fcntl(F_ADD_SEALS, F_SEAL_EXEC) to convert the memfd to W^X. 4. call exec() on the memfd. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20221215001205.51969-5-jeffxu@google.com Signed-off-by: Jeff Xu Reviewed-by: Kees Cook Cc: Daniel Verkamp Cc: David Herrmann Cc: Dmitry Torokhov Cc: Hugh Dickins Cc: Jann Horn Cc: Jorge Lucangeli Obes Cc: kernel test robot Cc: Shuah Khan Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

mm/memfd: add MFD_NOEXEC_SEAL and MFD_EXEC

2023-01-19T01:12:37+00:00

The new MFD_NOEXEC_SEAL and MFD_EXEC flags allows application to set executable bit at creation time (memfd_create). When MFD_NOEXEC_SEAL is set, memfd is created without executable bit (mode:0666), and sealed with F_SEAL_EXEC, so it can't be chmod to be executable (mode: 0777) after creation. when MFD_EXEC flag is set, memfd is created with executable bit (mode:0777), this is the same as the old behavior of memfd_create. The new pid namespaced sysctl vm.memfd_noexec has 3 values: 0: memfd_create() without MFD_EXEC nor MFD_NOEXEC_SEAL acts like MFD_EXEC was set. 1: memfd_create() without MFD_EXEC nor MFD_NOEXEC_SEAL acts like MFD_NOEXEC_SEAL was set. 2: memfd_create() without MFD_NOEXEC_SEAL will be rejected. The sysctl allows finer control of memfd_create for old-software that doesn't set the executable bit, for example, a container with vm.memfd_noexec=1 means the old-software will create non-executable memfd by default. Also, the value of memfd_noexec is passed to child namespace at creation time. For example, if the init namespace has vm.memfd_noexec=2, all its children namespaces will be created with 2. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: add stub functions to fix build] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: remove unneeded register_pid_ns_ctl_table_vm() stub, per Jeff] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: s/pr_warn_ratelimited/pr_warn_once/, per review] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix CONFIG_SYSCTL=n warning] Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20221215001205.51969-4-jeffxu@google.com Signed-off-by: Jeff Xu Co-developed-by: Daniel Verkamp Signed-off-by: Daniel Verkamp Reported-by: kernel test robot Reviewed-by: Kees Cook Cc: David Herrmann Cc: Dmitry Torokhov Cc: Hugh Dickins Cc: Jann Horn Cc: Jorge Lucangeli Obes Cc: Shuah Khan Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton