arch: Introduce post-init read-only memory

One of the easiest ways to protect the kernel from attack is to reduce
the internal attack surface exposed when a "write" flaw is available. By
making as much of the kernel read-only as possible, we reduce the
attack surface.

Many things are written to only during __init, and never changed
again. These cannot be made "const" since the compiler will do the wrong
thing (we do actually need to write to them). Instead, move these items
into a memory region that will be made read-only during mark_rodata_ro()
which happens after all kernel __init code has finished.

This introduces __ro_after_init as a way to mark such memory, and adds
some documentation about the existing __read_mostly marking.

This improves the security of the Linux kernel by marking formerly
read-write memory regions as read-only on a fully booted up system.

Based on work by PaX Team and Brad Spengler.

Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Cc: Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>
Cc: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
Cc: Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>
Cc: Brad Spengler <spender@grsecurity.net>
Cc: Brian Gerst <brgerst@gmail.com>
Cc: David Brown <david.brown@linaro.org>
Cc: Denys Vlasenko <dvlasenk@redhat.com>
Cc: Emese Revfy <re.emese@gmail.com>
Cc: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Mathias Krause <minipli@googlemail.com>
Cc: Michael Ellerman <mpe@ellerman.id.au>
Cc: PaX Team <pageexec@freemail.hu>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: kernel-hardening@lists.openwall.com
Cc: linux-arch <linux-arch@vger.kernel.org>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1455748879-21872-5-git-send-email-keescook@chromium.org
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>

1 files changed, 3 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/arch/parisc/include/asm/cache.h b/arch/parisc/include/asm/cache.h
index 3d0e17b..df0f52b 100644
--- a/arch/parisc/include/asm/cache.h
+++ b/arch/parisc/include/asm/cache.h
@@ -22,6 +22,9 @@
 
 #define __read_mostly __attribute__((__section__(".data..read_mostly")))
 
+/* Read-only memory is marked before mark_rodata_ro() is called. */
+#define __ro_after_init	__read_mostly
+
 void parisc_cache_init(void);	/* initializes cache-flushing */
 void disable_sr_hashing_asm(int); /* low level support for above */
 void disable_sr_hashing(void);   /* turns off space register hashing */