linux/Documentation/userspace-api
Waiman Long 71368af902 x86/speculation: Add PR_SPEC_DISABLE_NOEXEC
With the default SPEC_STORE_BYPASS_SECCOMP/SPEC_STORE_BYPASS_PRCTL mode,
the TIF_SSBD bit will be inherited when a new task is fork'ed or cloned.
It will also remain when a new program is execve'ed.

Only certain class of applications (like Java) that can run on behalf of
multiple users on a single thread will require disabling speculative store
bypass for security purposes. Those applications will call prctl(2) at
startup time to disable SSB. They won't rely on the fact the SSB might have
been disabled. Other applications that don't need SSBD will just move on
without checking if SSBD has been turned on or not.

The fact that the TIF_SSBD is inherited across execve(2) boundary will
cause performance of applications that don't need SSBD but their
predecessors have SSBD on to be unwittingly impacted especially if they
write to memory a lot.

To remedy this problem, a new PR_SPEC_DISABLE_NOEXEC argument for the
PR_SET_SPECULATION_CTRL option of prctl(2) is added to allow applications
to specify that the SSBD feature bit on the task structure should be
cleared whenever a new program is being execve'ed.

Suggested-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Waiman Long <longman@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: linux-doc@vger.kernel.org
Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com>
Cc: David Woodhouse <dwmw@amazon.co.uk>
Cc: Jiri Kosina <jikos@kernel.org>
Cc: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com>
Cc: Tim Chen <tim.c.chen@linux.intel.com>
Cc: KarimAllah Ahmed <karahmed@amazon.de>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@oracle.com>
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/1547676096-3281-1-git-send-email-longman@redhat.com
2019-01-29 22:11:49 +01:00
..
conf.py
index.rst prctl: Add speculation control prctls 2018-05-03 13:55:50 +02:00
no_new_privs.rst doc: ReSTify no_new_privs.txt 2017-05-18 10:30:09 -06:00
seccomp_filter.rst seccomp: add a return code to trap to userspace 2018-12-11 16:28:41 -08:00
spec_ctrl.rst x86/speculation: Add PR_SPEC_DISABLE_NOEXEC 2019-01-29 22:11:49 +01:00
unshare.rst doc-rst: fix inline emphasis in unshare.rst 2017-05-18 10:23:10 -06:00