Messages in this thread |  | | From | Andy Lutomirski <> | Date | Sun, 9 Apr 2017 17:10:16 -0700 | Subject | Re: [kernel-hardening] Re: [RFC v2][PATCH 04/11] x86: Implement __arch_rare_write_begin/unmap() |
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On Sun, Apr 9, 2017 at 5:47 AM, PaX Team <pageexec@freemail.hu> wrote: > On 7 Apr 2017 at 21:58, Andy Lutomirski wrote: > >> On Fri, Apr 7, 2017 at 12:58 PM, PaX Team <pageexec@freemail.hu> wrote: >> > On 7 Apr 2017 at 9:14, Andy Lutomirski wrote: >> >> Then someone who cares about performance can benchmark the CR0.WP >> >> approach against it and try to argue that it's a good idea. This >> >> benchmark should wait until I'm done with my PCID work, because PCID >> >> is going to make use_mm() a whole heck of a lot faster. >> > >> > in my measurements switching PCID is hovers around 230 cycles for snb-ivb >> > and 200-220 for hsw-skl whereas cr0 writes are around 230-240 cycles. there's >> > of course a whole lot more impact for switching address spaces so it'll never >> > be fast enough to beat cr0.wp. >> > >> >> If I'm reading this right, you're saying that a non-flushing CR3 write >> is about the same cost as a CR0.WP write. If so, then why should CR0 >> be preferred over the (arch-neutral) CR3 approach? > > cr3 (page table switching) isn't arch neutral at all ;). you probably meant > the higher level primitives except they're not enough to implement the scheme > as discussed before since the enter/exit paths are very much arch dependent.
Yes.
> > on x86 the cost of the pax_open/close_kernel primitives comes from the cr0 > writes and nothing else, use_mm suffers not only from the cr3 writes but > also locking/atomic ops and cr4 writes on its path and the inevitable TLB > entry costs. and if cpu vendors cared enough, they could make toggling cr0.wp > a fast path in the microcode and reduce its overhead by an order of magnitude. >
If the CR4 writes happen in for this use case, that's a bug.
>> And why would switching address spaces obviously be much slower? >> There'll be a very small number of TLB fills needed for the actual >> protected access. > > you'll be duplicating TLB entries in the alternative PCID for both code > and data, where they will accumulate (=take room away from the normal PCID > and expose unwanted memory for access) unless you also flush them when > switching back (which then will cost even more cycles). also i'm not sure > that processors implement all the 12 PCID bits so depending on how many PCIDs > you plan to use, you could be causing even more unnecessary TLB replacements. >
Unless the CPU is rather dumber than I expect, the only duplicated entries should be for the writable aliases of pages that are written. The rest of the pages are global and should be shared for all PCIDs.
--Andy
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