Move the i386 VDSO down into a vma and thus randomize it.
Besides the security implications, this feature also helps debuggers, which
can COW a vma-backed VDSO just like a normal DSO and can thus do
single-stepping and other debugging features.
It's good for hypervisors (Xen, VMWare) too, which typically live in the same
high-mapped address space as the VDSO, hence whenever the VDSO is used, they
get lots of guest pagefaults and have to fix such guest accesses up - which
slows things down instead of speeding things up (the primary purpose of the
VDSO).
There's a new CONFIG_COMPAT_VDSO (default=y) option, which provides support
for older glibcs that still rely on a prelinked high-mapped VDSO. Newer
distributions (using glibc 2.3.3 or later) can turn this option off. Turning
it off is also recommended for security reasons: attackers cannot use the
predictable high-mapped VDSO page as syscall trampoline anymore.
There is a new vdso=[0|1] boot option as well, and a runtime
/proc/sys/vm/vdso_enabled sysctl switch, that allows the VDSO to be turned
on/off.
(This version of the VDSO-randomization patch also has working ELF
coredumping, the previous patch crashed in the coredumping code.)
This code is a combined work of the exec-shield VDSO randomization
code and Gerd Hoffmann's hypervisor-centric VDSO patch. Rusty Russell
started this patch and i completed it.
[akpm@osdl.org: cleanups]
[akpm@osdl.org: compile fix]
[akpm@osdl.org: compile fix 2]
[akpm@osdl.org: compile fix 3]
[akpm@osdl.org: revernt MAXMEM change]
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar
Signed-off-by: Arjan van de Ven
Cc: Gerd Hoffmann
Cc: Rusty Russell
Cc: Zachary Amsden
Cc: Andi Kleen
Cc: Jan Beulich
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds