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Subject[PATCH v2 0/3] Randomize free memory
From
Date
Changes since v1:
* Add support for shuffling hot-added memory (Andrew)
* Update cover letter and commit message to clarify the performance impact
and relevance to future platforms

[1]: https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/9/15/366

---

Some data exfiltration and return-oriented-programming attacks rely on
the ability to infer the location of sensitive data objects. The kernel
page allocator, especially early in system boot, has predictable
first-in-first out behavior for physical pages. Pages are freed in
physical address order when first onlined.

Quoting Kees:
"While we already have a base-address randomization
(CONFIG_RANDOMIZE_MEMORY), attacks against the same hardware and
memory layouts would certainly be using the predictability of
allocation ordering (i.e. for attacks where the base address isn't
important: only the relative positions between allocated memory).
This is common in lots of heap-style attacks. They try to gain
control over ordering by spraying allocations, etc.

I'd really like to see this because it gives us something similar
to CONFIG_SLAB_FREELIST_RANDOM but for the page allocator."

Another motivation for this change is performance in the presence of a
memory-side cache. In the future, memory-side-cache technology will be
available on generally available server platforms. The proposed
randomization approach has been measured to improve the cache conflict
rate by a factor of 2.5X on a well-known Java benchmark. It avoids
performance peaks and valleys to provide more predictable performance.

More details in the patch1 commit message.

---

Dan Williams (3):
mm: Shuffle initial free memory
mm: Move buddy list manipulations into helpers
mm: Maintain randomization of page free lists


include/linux/list.h | 17 +++
include/linux/mm.h | 8 +
include/linux/mm_types.h | 3 +
include/linux/mmzone.h | 57 ++++++++++
mm/bootmem.c | 9 +-
mm/compaction.c | 4 -
mm/memory_hotplug.c | 2
mm/nobootmem.c | 7 +
mm/page_alloc.c | 267 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-------
9 files changed, 321 insertions(+), 53 deletions(-)

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