[PATCH RFC] Randomized slab caches for kmalloc()

[Alexander Lobakin]

From: Hyeonggon Yoo <42.hyeyoo at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2023 21:26:47 +0900

> On 3/15/2023 6:54 PM, GONG, Ruiqi wrote:
>> When exploiting memory vulnerabilities, "heap spraying" is a common
>> technique targeting those related to dynamic memory allocation (i.e. the
>> "heap"), and it plays an important role in a successful exploitation.
>> Basically, it is to overwrite the memory area of vulnerable object by
>> triggering allocation in other subsystems or modules and therefore
>> getting a reference to the targeted memory location. It's usable on
>> various types of vulnerablity including use after free (UAF), heap out-
>> of-bound write and etc.
>>
>> There are (at least) two reasons why the heap can be sprayed: 1) generic
>> slab caches are shared among different subsystems and modules, and
>> 2) dedicated slab caches could be merged with the generic ones.
>> Currently these two factors cannot be prevented at a low cost: the first
>> one is a widely used memory allocation mechanism, and shutting down slab
>> merging completely via `slub_nomerge` would be overkill.
>>
>> To efficiently prevent heap spraying, we propose the following approach:
>> to create multiple copies of generic slab caches that will never be
>> merged, and random one of them will be used at allocation. The random
>> selection is based on the location of code that calls `kmalloc()`, which
>> means it is static at runtime (rather than dynamically determined at
>> each time of allocation, which could be bypassed by repeatedly spraying
>> in brute force). In this way, the vulnerable object and memory allocated
>> in other subsystems and modules will (most probably) be on different
>> slab caches, which prevents the object from being sprayed.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: GONG, Ruiqi <gongruiqi1 at huawei.com>
>> ---
> 
> I'm not yet sure if this feature is appropriate for mainline kernel.
> 
> I have few questions:
> 
> 1) What is cost of this configuration, in terms of memory overhead, or
> execution time?
> 
> 
> 2) The actual cache depends on caller which is static at build time, not
> runtime.
> 
>     What about using (caller ^ (some subsystem-wide random sequence)),
> 
>     which is static at runtime?

Why can't we just do

	random_get_u32_below(CONFIG_RANDOM_KMALLOC_CACHES_NR)

?
It's fast enough according to Jason... `_RET_IP_ % nr` doesn't sound
"secure" to me. It really is a compile-time constant, which can be
calculated (or not?) manually. Even if it wasn't, `% nr` doesn't sound
good, there should be at least hash_32().

Thanks,
Olek