riscv: patch: fix handling of bpf-jit execmem addresses

Overview

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

riscv: patch: fix handling of bpf-jit execmem addresses

Commit 8718e5a3090b ("riscv: patch: skip fixmap mapping when kernel text is already writable") gated the core_kernel_text() branch of patch_map() on CONFIG_STRICT_KERNEL_RWX, and explicitly left the vmalloc branch unchanged. That branch has a separate problem.

That branch only creates a temporary writable fixmap alias when CONFIG_STRICT_MODULE_RWX is enabled, and otherwise assumes the target is directly writable and returns the address unchanged. That assumption no longer holds: bpf_prog_pack_alloc calls set_memory_rox() on every pack unconditionally in alloc_new_pack(), independently of any CONFIG_STRICT_*_RWX option, so BPF text in the vmalloc area is read-only regardless of what CONFIG_STRICT_MODULE_RWX says.

With CONFIG_STRICT_MODULE_RWX=n, patch_map() returns the read-only address directly, the subsequent copy_to_kernel_nofault() takes a page fault and returns -EFAULT. bpf_arch_text_copy() turns that into -EINVAL, which propagates through bpf_jit_binary_pack_finalize() to the WARN_ON() in bpf_int_jit_compile() and leaves the program un-JITed.

Note that BPF cannot be fixed the way kprobes was in commit bdc46e507b59 ("riscv: mm: make EXECMEM_KPROBES writable without CONFIG_STRICT_MODULE_RWX"). EXECMEM_BPF is already PAGE_KERNEL, i.e. writable at allocation time; the read-only mapping is established afterwards by generic code in alloc_new_pack(), which arch code cannot influence. The only place this can be handled is patch_map().

This is the same problem that was fixed on arm64 by commit b1480ed230ac ("arm64: patching: fix handling of execmem addresses"), and the fix is the same: CONFIG_EXECMEM is what actually tracks whether the vmalloc area can hold executable memory that needs a temporary alias to be written. CONFIG_BPF_JIT, CONFIG_KPROBES and CONFIG_MODULES all select it.

Note that this is not limited to CONFIG_MODULES=n. Unlike arm64, riscv selects CONFIG_ARCH_OPTIONAL_KERNEL_RWX, so CONFIG_STRICT_MODULE_RWX can be disabled with CONFIG_MODULES=y as well, and the bug is reachable in that configuration too.

The !CONFIG_MMU build is unaffected: it has its own __patch_insn_set() and __patch_insn_write() implementations and never calls patch_map().

Affected

• Linux >= 2c9e5d4a008293407836d29d35dfd4353615bd2f < 562a35b9e0b3d9483d9472995219cadb3592db3d
• Linux >= 2c9e5d4a008293407836d29d35dfd4353615bd2f < 9e8fc7972b398e9dc2415ece283d8f64edac3858
• Linux >= 2c9e5d4a008293407836d29d35dfd4353615bd2f < f71d6ea3843c8038c431c2699482f246aea37ca0
• Linux >= 2c9e5d4a008293407836d29d35dfd4353615bd2f < a510e1ae8c9030750c2edf7b0bc9b186cd8c7a06
• Linux 6.10

Remediation

Refer to the linked advisories for vendor-supplied fixes and affected version ranges.