From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.org/gmane.linux.lib.musl.general/13282 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Rich Felker Newsgroups: gmane.linux.lib.musl.general Subject: Re: Replacing a_crash() ? Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2018 11:36:16 -0400 Message-ID: <20180917153616.GM17995@brightrain.aerifal.cx> References: <20180917032317.GF17995@brightrain.aerifal.cx> <20180917152415.GA29861@voyager> Reply-To: musl@lists.openwall.com NNTP-Posting-Host: blaine.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: blaine.gmane.org 1537198465 28442 195.159.176.226 (17 Sep 2018 15:34:25 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2018 15:34:25 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) To: musl@lists.openwall.com Original-X-From: musl-return-13298-gllmg-musl=m.gmane.org@lists.openwall.com Mon Sep 17 17:34:21 2018 Return-path: Envelope-to: gllmg-musl@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from mother.openwall.net ([195.42.179.200]) by blaine.gmane.org with smtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1g1vXY-0007G7-B7 for gllmg-musl@m.gmane.org; Mon, 17 Sep 2018 17:34:20 +0200 Original-Received: (qmail 32190 invoked by uid 550); 17 Sep 2018 15:36:29 -0000 Mailing-List: contact musl-help@lists.openwall.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-ID: Original-Received: (qmail 32172 invoked from network); 17 Sep 2018 15:36:28 -0000 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20180917152415.GA29861@voyager> Original-Sender: Rich Felker Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.linux.lib.musl.general:13282 Archived-At: On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 05:24:15PM +0200, Markus Wichmann wrote: > On Sun, Sep 16, 2018 at 11:23:17PM -0400, Rich Felker wrote: > > Now that we have an abort() that reliably terminates with uncatchable > > SIGABRT, I've been thinking about replacing the a_crash() calls in > > musl (which are usually an instruction generating SIGILL or SIGSEGV) > > with calls to the uncatchable tail of abort(), which I would factor > > off as a __forced_abort() function. > > > > In case it's not clear, the reason for not just calling abort() is > > that too many programs catch it, and catching it is even encouraged. > > Catchability is a problem with the current approach too, since > > a_crash() is used in places where process state is known to be > > dangerously corrupt and likely under attacker control; eliminating it > > is one of the potential goals of switching to __forced_abort(). > > > > Are there any objections to making such a change? So far I've gotten > > mostly positive feedback -- SIGABRT is more telling of what's happened > > than SIGSEGV/SIGILL. It would also get rid of the ugly misplacement of > > a_crash() (no longer needed) in "atomic.h" and the inclusion of > > "atomic.h" in some files where it makes no sense without knowing it's > > where a_crash() is defined. > > > > For i386, some nontrivial work would be needed to make abort's tail > > perform syscalls with int $128 rather than the vdso, which is unsafe > > since the pointer to it may have been subverted. On other archs, > > inline syscalls are fully inline. I'd probably add a > > NEED_FAILSAFE_SYSCALL macro to define before including "syscall.h" and > > have arch/i386/syscall_arch.h adjust the asm string based on it; this > > is more maintainable than writing an asm version of the function. > > Simple checklist for whether to perform a change or not: > > 1. Does the change fix problems? Check (namely, maintainability, > legibility, understandability of problems). It slightly reduces amount of per-arch asm needed. (Actually not, because there's a "generic" a_crash() that writes to a volatile null pointer, but it doesn't work on nommu.) It also gets rid of atomic.h dependencies. > 2. Does the change introduce problems? Unlikely. Someone might subvert > __forced_abort(), but then, someone might catch SIGILL, so we haven't > gone anywhere. I was thinking more like friendliness to debugging workflows; that's the motivation for not using SIGKILL, which always would have been easy. Subverting __forced_abort() for static linking is of course easy; for dynamic you'd have to modify the mapped libc.so since it would be a direct call. > 3. Is the change compatible with old programs? No, but a_crash() was > never a defined interface, so any program catching it was walking on > thin ice, anyway. > > So that's two green lights and a don't care, so please go ahead. Indeed, catching it was never intended to be supported usage. Rich