bpf: Allow trusted pointers to be passed to KF_TRUSTED_ARGS kfuncs

Kfuncs currently support specifying the KF_TRUSTED_ARGS flag to signal
to the verifier that it should enforce that a BPF program passes it a
"safe", trusted pointer. Currently, "safe" means that the pointer is
either PTR_TO_CTX, or is refcounted. There may be cases, however, where
the kernel passes a BPF program a safe / trusted pointer to an object
that the BPF program wishes to use as a kptr, but because the object
does not yet have a ref_obj_id from the perspective of the verifier, the
program would be unable to pass it to a KF_ACQUIRE | KF_TRUSTED_ARGS
kfunc.

The solution is to expand the set of pointers that are considered
trusted according to KF_TRUSTED_ARGS, so that programs can invoke kfuncs
with these pointers without getting rejected by the verifier.

There is already a PTR_UNTRUSTED flag that is set in some scenarios,
such as when a BPF program reads a kptr directly from a map
without performing a bpf_kptr_xchg() call. These pointers of course can
and should be rejected by the verifier. Unfortunately, however,
PTR_UNTRUSTED does not cover all the cases for safety that need to
be addressed to adequately protect kfuncs. Specifically, pointers
obtained by a BPF program "walking" a struct are _not_ considered
PTR_UNTRUSTED according to BPF. For example, say that we were to add a
kfunc called bpf_task_acquire(), with KF_ACQUIRE | KF_TRUSTED_ARGS, to
acquire a struct task_struct *. If we only used PTR_UNTRUSTED to signal
that a task was unsafe to pass to a kfunc, the verifier would mistakenly
allow the following unsafe BPF program to be loaded:

SEC("tp_btf/task_newtask")
int BPF_PROG(unsafe_acquire_task,
             struct task_struct *task,
             u64 clone_flags)
{
        struct task_struct *acquired, *nested;

        nested = task->last_wakee;

        /* Would not be rejected by the verifier. */
        acquired = bpf_task_acquire(nested);
        if (!acquired)
                return 0;

        bpf_task_release(acquired);
        return 0;
}

To address this, this patch defines a new type flag called PTR_TRUSTED
which tracks whether a PTR_TO_BTF_ID pointer is safe to pass to a
KF_TRUSTED_ARGS kfunc or a BPF helper function. PTR_TRUSTED pointers are
passed directly from the kernel as a tracepoint or struct_ops callback
argument. Any nested pointer that is obtained from walking a PTR_TRUSTED
pointer is no longer PTR_TRUSTED. From the example above, the struct
task_struct *task argument is PTR_TRUSTED, but the 'nested' pointer
obtained from 'task->last_wakee' is not PTR_TRUSTED.

A subsequent patch will add kfuncs for storing a task kfunc as a kptr,
and then another patch will add selftests to validate.

Signed-off-by: David Vernet <void@manifault.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20221120051004.3605026-3-void@manifault.com
Signed-off-by: Alexei Starovoitov <ast@kernel.org>

1 files changed, 41 insertions, 24 deletions

diff --git a/include/linux/btf.h b/include/linux/btf.h
index d5b26380a60f..d38aa4251c28 100644
--- a/include/linux/btf.h
+++ b/include/linux/btf.h
@@ -19,36 +19,53 @@
 #define KF_RELEASE	(1 << 1) /* kfunc is a release function */
 #define KF_RET_NULL	(1 << 2) /* kfunc returns a pointer that may be NULL */
 #define KF_KPTR_GET	(1 << 3) /* kfunc returns reference to a kptr */
-/* Trusted arguments are those which are meant to be referenced arguments with
- * unchanged offset. It is used to enforce that pointers obtained from acquire
- * kfuncs remain unmodified when being passed to helpers taking trusted args.
+/* Trusted arguments are those which are guaranteed to be valid when passed to
+ * the kfunc. It is used to enforce that pointers obtained from either acquire
+ * kfuncs, or from the main kernel on a tracepoint or struct_ops callback
+ * invocation, remain unmodified when being passed to helpers taking trusted
+ * args.
  *
- * Consider
- *	struct foo {
- *		int data;
- *		struct foo *next;
- *	};
+ * Consider, for example, the following new task tracepoint:
  *
- *	struct bar {
- *		int data;
- *		struct foo f;
- *	};
+ *	SEC("tp_btf/task_newtask")
+ *	int BPF_PROG(new_task_tp, struct task_struct *task, u64 clone_flags)
+ *	{
+ *		...
+ *	}
  *
- *	struct foo *f = alloc_foo(); // Acquire kfunc
- *	struct bar *b = alloc_bar(); // Acquire kfunc
+ * And the following kfunc:
  *
- * If a kfunc set_foo_data() wants to operate only on the allocated object, it
- * will set the KF_TRUSTED_ARGS flag, which will prevent unsafe usage like:
+ *	BTF_ID_FLAGS(func, bpf_task_acquire, KF_ACQUIRE | KF_TRUSTED_ARGS)
  *
- *	set_foo_data(f, 42);	   // Allowed
- *	set_foo_data(f->next, 42); // Rejected, non-referenced pointer
- *	set_foo_data(&f->next, 42);// Rejected, referenced, but wrong type
- *	set_foo_data(&b->f, 42);   // Rejected, referenced, but bad offset
+ * All invocations to the kfunc must pass the unmodified, unwalked task:
  *
- * In the final case, usually for the purposes of type matching, it is deduced
- * by looking at the type of the member at the offset, but due to the
- * requirement of trusted argument, this deduction will be strict and not done
- * for this case.
+ *	bpf_task_acquire(task);		    // Allowed
+ *	bpf_task_acquire(task->last_wakee); // Rejected, walked task
+ *
+ * Programs may also pass referenced tasks directly to the kfunc:
+ *
+ *	struct task_struct *acquired;
+ *
+ *	acquired = bpf_task_acquire(task);	// Allowed, same as above
+ *	bpf_task_acquire(acquired);		// Allowed
+ *	bpf_task_acquire(task);			// Allowed
+ *	bpf_task_acquire(acquired->last_wakee); // Rejected, walked task
+ *
+ * Programs may _not_, however, pass a task from an arbitrary fentry/fexit, or
+ * kprobe/kretprobe to the kfunc, as BPF cannot guarantee that all of these
+ * pointers are guaranteed to be safe. For example, the following BPF program
+ * would be rejected:
+ *
+ * SEC("kretprobe/free_task")
+ * int BPF_PROG(free_task_probe, struct task_struct *tsk)
+ * {
+ *	struct task_struct *acquired;
+ *
+ *	acquired = bpf_task_acquire(acquired); // Rejected, not a trusted pointer
+ *	bpf_task_release(acquired);
+ *
+ *	return 0;
+ * }
  */
 #define KF_TRUSTED_ARGS (1 << 4) /* kfunc only takes trusted pointer arguments */
 #define KF_SLEEPABLE    (1 << 5) /* kfunc may sleep */