list: Introduce CONFIG_LIST_HARDENED

Numerous production kernel configs (see [1, 2]) are choosing to enable
CONFIG_DEBUG_LIST, which is also being recommended by KSPP for hardened
configs [3]. The motivation behind this is that the option can be used
as a security hardening feature (e.g. CVE-2019-2215 and CVE-2019-2025
are mitigated by the option [4]).

The feature has never been designed with performance in mind, yet common
list manipulation is happening across hot paths all over the kernel.

Introduce CONFIG_LIST_HARDENED, which performs list pointer checking
inline, and only upon list corruption calls the reporting slow path.

To generate optimal machine code with CONFIG_LIST_HARDENED:

  1. Elide checking for pointer values which upon dereference would
     result in an immediate access fault (i.e. minimal hardening
     checks).  The trade-off is lower-quality error reports.

  2. Use the __preserve_most function attribute (available with Clang,
     but not yet with GCC) to minimize the code footprint for calling
     the reporting slow path. As a result, function size of callers is
     reduced by avoiding saving registers before calling the rarely
     called reporting slow path.

     Note that all TUs in lib/Makefile already disable function tracing,
     including list_debug.c, and __preserve_most's implied notrace has
     no effect in this case.

  3. Because the inline checks are a subset of the full set of checks in
     __list_*_valid_or_report(), always return false if the inline
     checks failed.  This avoids redundant compare and conditional
     branch right after return from the slow path.

As a side-effect of the checks being inline, if the compiler can prove
some condition to always be true, it can completely elide some checks.

Since DEBUG_LIST is functionally a superset of LIST_HARDENED, the
Kconfig variables are changed to reflect that: DEBUG_LIST selects
LIST_HARDENED, whereas LIST_HARDENED itself has no dependency on
DEBUG_LIST.

Running netperf with CONFIG_LIST_HARDENED (using a Clang compiler with
"preserve_most") shows throughput improvements, in my case of ~7% on
average (up to 20-30% on some test cases).

Link: https://r.android.com/1266735 [1]
Link: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/linux/-/blob/main/config [2]
Link: https://kernsec.org/wiki/index.php/Kernel_Self_Protection_Project/Recommended_Settings [3]
Link: https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2019/11/bad-binder-android-in-wild-exploit.html [4]
Signed-off-by: Marco Elver <elver@google.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20230811151847.1594958-3-elver@google.com
Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>

2 files changed, 3 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/nvhe/Makefile b/arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/nvhe/Makefile
index 9ddc025e4b86..2250253a6429 100644
--- a/arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/nvhe/Makefile
+++ b/arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/nvhe/Makefile
@@ -25,7 +25,7 @@ hyp-obj-y := timer-sr.o sysreg-sr.o debug-sr.o switch.o tlb.o hyp-init.o host.o
 	 cache.o setup.o mm.o mem_protect.o sys_regs.o pkvm.o stacktrace.o ffa.o
 hyp-obj-y += ../vgic-v3-sr.o ../aarch32.o ../vgic-v2-cpuif-proxy.o ../entry.o \
 	 ../fpsimd.o ../hyp-entry.o ../exception.o ../pgtable.o
-hyp-obj-$(CONFIG_DEBUG_LIST) += list_debug.o
+hyp-obj-$(CONFIG_LIST_HARDENED) += list_debug.o
 hyp-obj-y += $(lib-objs)
 
 ##
diff --git a/arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/nvhe/list_debug.c b/arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/nvhe/list_debug.c
index 16266a939a4c..46a2d4f2b3c6 100644
--- a/arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/nvhe/list_debug.c
+++ b/arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/nvhe/list_debug.c
@@ -26,6 +26,7 @@ static inline __must_check bool nvhe_check_data_corruption(bool v)
 
 /* The predicates checked here are taken from lib/list_debug.c. */
 
+__list_valid_slowpath
 bool __list_add_valid_or_report(struct list_head *new, struct list_head *prev,
 				struct list_head *next)
 {
@@ -37,6 +38,7 @@ bool __list_add_valid_or_report(struct list_head *new, struct list_head *prev,
 	return true;
 }
 
+__list_valid_slowpath
 bool __list_del_entry_valid_or_report(struct list_head *entry)
 {
 	struct list_head *prev, *next;