History log of /linux-master/Documentation/security/self-protection.rst
Revision Date Author Comments
# b080e521 08-Dec-2021 Shuah Khan <skhan@linuxfoundation.org>

docs: update self-protection __ro_after_init status

__ro_after_init is no longer new and under development. Update the
document to reflect the correct status.

Signed-off-by: Shuah Khan <skhan@linuxfoundation.org>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20211208164051.8783-1-skhan@linuxfoundation.org
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>


# ed535a2d 16-Aug-2018 Alexander Popov <alex.popov@linux.com>

doc: self-protection: Add information about STACKLEAK feature

Add information about STACKLEAK feature to the "Memory poisoning"
section of self-protection.rst.

Signed-off-by: Alexander Popov <alex.popov@linux.com>
Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>


# 050e9baa 13-Jun-2018 Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

Kbuild: rename CC_STACKPROTECTOR[_STRONG] config variables

The changes to automatically test for working stack protector compiler
support in the Kconfig files removed the special STACKPROTECTOR_AUTO
option that picked the strongest stack protector that the compiler
supported.

That was all a nice cleanup - it makes no sense to have the AUTO case
now that the Kconfig phase can just determine the compiler support
directly.

HOWEVER.

It also meant that doing "make oldconfig" would now _disable_ the strong
stackprotector if you had AUTO enabled, because in a legacy config file,
the sane stack protector configuration would look like

CONFIG_HAVE_CC_STACKPROTECTOR=y
# CONFIG_CC_STACKPROTECTOR_NONE is not set
# CONFIG_CC_STACKPROTECTOR_REGULAR is not set
# CONFIG_CC_STACKPROTECTOR_STRONG is not set
CONFIG_CC_STACKPROTECTOR_AUTO=y

and when you ran this through "make oldconfig" with the Kbuild changes,
it would ask you about the regular CONFIG_CC_STACKPROTECTOR (that had
been renamed from CONFIG_CC_STACKPROTECTOR_REGULAR to just
CONFIG_CC_STACKPROTECTOR), but it would think that the STRONG version
used to be disabled (because it was really enabled by AUTO), and would
disable it in the new config, resulting in:

CONFIG_HAVE_CC_STACKPROTECTOR=y
CONFIG_CC_HAS_STACKPROTECTOR_NONE=y
CONFIG_CC_STACKPROTECTOR=y
# CONFIG_CC_STACKPROTECTOR_STRONG is not set
CONFIG_CC_HAS_SANE_STACKPROTECTOR=y

That's dangerously subtle - people could suddenly find themselves with
the weaker stack protector setup without even realizing.

The solution here is to just rename not just the old RECULAR stack
protector option, but also the strong one. This does that by just
removing the CC_ prefix entirely for the user choices, because it really
is not about the compiler support (the compiler support now instead
automatially impacts _visibility_ of the options to users).

This results in "make oldconfig" actually asking the user for their
choice, so that we don't have any silent subtle security model changes.
The end result would generally look like this:

CONFIG_HAVE_CC_STACKPROTECTOR=y
CONFIG_CC_HAS_STACKPROTECTOR_NONE=y
CONFIG_STACKPROTECTOR=y
CONFIG_STACKPROTECTOR_STRONG=y
CONFIG_CC_HAS_SANE_STACKPROTECTOR=y

where the "CC_" versions really are about internal compiler
infrastructure, not the user selections.

Acked-by: Masahiro Yamada <yamada.masahiro@socionext.com>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>


# 227d1a61 19-Dec-2017 Tobin C. Harding <me@tobin.cc>

doc: add documentation on printing kernel addresses

Hashing addresses printed with printk specifier %p was implemented
recently. During development a number of issues were raised regarding
leaking kernel addresses to userspace. Other documentation was updated but
security/self-protection missed out.

Add self-protection documentation regarding printing kernel addresses.

Signed-off-by: Tobin C. Harding <me@tobin.cc>
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>


# c2ed6743 13-May-2017 Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>

doc: ReSTify self-protection.txt

This updates the credentials API documentation to ReST markup and moves
it under the security subsection of kernel API documentation.

Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>