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authorAndrey Konovalov <andreyknvl@google.com>2021-04-29 23:00:30 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2021-04-30 11:20:42 -0700
commita6c18d4e763873e900b8932211a3f66589f943a2 (patch)
treee56c5b0da5bb43e6509a41eaef5e31b4aae04014 /Documentation/dev-tools
parentkasan: docs: update GENERIC implementation details section (diff)
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kasan: docs: update SW_TAGS implementation details section
Update the "Implementation details" section for SW_TAGS KASAN: - Clarify the introduction sentence. - Punctuation, readability, and other minor clean-ups. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/69b9b2e49d8cf789358fa24558be3fc0ce4ee32c.1615559068.git.andreyknvl@google.com Signed-off-by: Andrey Konovalov <andreyknvl@google.com> Reviewed-by: Marco Elver <elver@google.com> Cc: Alexander Potapenko <glider@google.com> Cc: Andrey Ryabinin <aryabinin@virtuozzo.com> Cc: Dmitry Vyukov <dvyukov@google.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/dev-tools')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/dev-tools/kasan.rst39
1 files changed, 19 insertions, 20 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/dev-tools/kasan.rst b/Documentation/dev-tools/kasan.rst
index 027878f92291..69f384b0c2d3 100644
--- a/Documentation/dev-tools/kasan.rst
+++ b/Documentation/dev-tools/kasan.rst
@@ -244,38 +244,37 @@ quarantine (see mm/kasan/quarantine.c for implementation).
Software tag-based KASAN
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-Software tag-based KASAN requires software memory tagging support in the form
-of HWASan-like compiler instrumentation (see HWASan documentation for details).
-
-Software tag-based KASAN is currently only implemented for arm64 architecture.
+Software tag-based KASAN uses a software memory tagging approach to checking
+access validity. It is currently only implemented for the arm64 architecture.
Software tag-based KASAN uses the Top Byte Ignore (TBI) feature of arm64 CPUs
-to store a pointer tag in the top byte of kernel pointers. Like generic KASAN
-it uses shadow memory to store memory tags associated with each 16-byte memory
-cell (therefore it dedicates 1/16th of the kernel memory for shadow memory).
+to store a pointer tag in the top byte of kernel pointers. It uses shadow memory
+to store memory tags associated with each 16-byte memory cell (therefore, it
+dedicates 1/16th of the kernel memory for shadow memory).
-On each memory allocation software tag-based KASAN generates a random tag, tags
-the allocated memory with this tag, and embeds this tag into the returned
+On each memory allocation, software tag-based KASAN generates a random tag, tags
+the allocated memory with this tag, and embeds the same tag into the returned
pointer.
Software tag-based KASAN uses compile-time instrumentation to insert checks
-before each memory access. These checks make sure that tag of the memory that
-is being accessed is equal to tag of the pointer that is used to access this
-memory. In case of a tag mismatch software tag-based KASAN prints a bug report.
+before each memory access. These checks make sure that the tag of the memory
+that is being accessed is equal to the tag of the pointer that is used to access
+this memory. In case of a tag mismatch, software tag-based KASAN prints a bug
+report.
-Software tag-based KASAN also has two instrumentation modes (outline, that
-emits callbacks to check memory accesses; and inline, that performs the shadow
+Software tag-based KASAN also has two instrumentation modes (outline, which
+emits callbacks to check memory accesses; and inline, which performs the shadow
memory checks inline). With outline instrumentation mode, a bug report is
-simply printed from the function that performs the access check. With inline
-instrumentation a brk instruction is emitted by the compiler, and a dedicated
-brk handler is used to print bug reports.
+printed from the function that performs the access check. With inline
+instrumentation, a ``brk`` instruction is emitted by the compiler, and a
+dedicated ``brk`` handler is used to print bug reports.
Software tag-based KASAN uses 0xFF as a match-all pointer tag (accesses through
-pointers with 0xFF pointer tag aren't checked). The value 0xFE is currently
+pointers with the 0xFF pointer tag are not checked). The value 0xFE is currently
reserved to tag freed memory regions.
-Software tag-based KASAN currently only supports tagging of
-kmem_cache_alloc/kmalloc and page_alloc memory.
+Software tag-based KASAN currently only supports tagging of slab and page_alloc
+memory.
Hardware tag-based KASAN
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~