• Jonathan Austin's avatar
    ARM: mpu: protect the vectors page with an MPU region · 9dfc28b6
    Jonathan Austin authored
    Without an MMU it is possible for userspace programs to start executing code
    in places that they have no business executing. The MPU allows some level of
    protection against this.
    
    This patch protects the vectors page from access by userspace processes.
    Userspace tasks that dereference a null pointer are already protected by an
    svc at 0x0 that kills them. However when tasks use an offset from a null
    pointer (eg a function in a null struct) they miss this carefully placed svc
    and enter the exception vectors in user mode, ending up in the kernel.
    
    This patch causes programs that do this to receive a SEGV instead of happily
    entering the kernel in user-mode, and hence avoid a 'Bad Mode' panic.
    
    As part of this change it is necessary to make sigreturn happen via the
    stack when there is not an sa_restorer function. This change is invisible to
    userspace, and irrelevant to code compiled using a uClibc toolchain, which
    always uses an sa_restorer function.
    
    Because we don't get to remap the vectors in !MMU kuser_helpers are not
    in a defined location, and hence aren't usable. This means we don't need to
    worry about keeping them accessible from PL0
    Signed-off-by: default avatarJonathan Austin <jonathan.austin@arm.com>
    Reviewed-by: default avatarWill Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>
    CC: Nicolas Pitre <nico@linaro.org>
    CC: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>
    9dfc28b6
mpu.h 1.77 KB