Overwrite detection for kernel text and read-only data
- Summary
- Overwrite detection for kernel text and read-only data
- Proposer
- Tim Bird, Sony Mobile
Description
In embedded systems, drivers or other subsystems can easily (mistakenly) overwrite kernel text or kernel read-only area. It can be very difficult to debug who is overwriting kernel.
It would be nice to have some mechanism to detect kernel overwriting or corruption by setting a write-protect attribute in page tables for kernel text or read-only data. x86 already has this feature in the form of CONFIG_DEBUG_RODATA. This project would consist of providing support for this feature in ARM, as well as possibly creating exceptions for code which needs to modify the kernel text at runtime, such as Kprobe or ftrace.
Related work
- ARM Linux Embedded memory protection techniques
- Presentation by Prabindh Sundareson in May, 2013 about the status of ARM memory protection features.
- The implementation of CONFIG_DEBUG_RODATA in x86 may have some useful information.
Scope
Unknown
Contractor Candidates
None yet.