kernel: a hostile return address cannot fault the kernel

SYSRETQ with a non-canonical RIP raises a general protection fault in ring
0 — on the kernel stack, an instruction after the swapgs that installed the
user's GS base. It is one of the better-known escalation primitives, and
ring 3 reaches it without any kernel bug at all: the processor saves the
address of the instruction after SYSCALL, so a program whose SYSCALL is the
last two bytes of the last canonical page returns to the first
non-canonical address. The new test does exactly that.

The exit path now sign-extends the return address from bit 47 and compares;
if the value changed, it returns through IRETQ instead, which commits the
privilege change before fetching the new address, so the fault arrives from
ring 3 and the process dies like any other. Four register-only operations
and a branch that a correct program can never take — it could not have
executed at a non-canonical address in the first place. Bit 47 is the right
pivot because danos builds four-level page tables and nothing sets the
five-level bit; a future port must move the pivot, and the comment says so.

SFMASK grows one bit while we are here. SYSCALL, unlike an interrupt gate,
does not clear the nested-task flag, so the kernel had been running every
system call with whatever ring 3 last chose — harmless while the only exit
was SYSRETQ, and a question worth not having now that one exit is IRETQ.
The kernel is never nested; ring 3 still gets its own flag back.

Suite 113/113. The new case asserts the refusal counter rather than the
dying process: the emulator we test on kills it either way, so only the
counter distinguishes a guard that ran from one that did not.
This commit is contained in:
Daniel Samson
2026-08-01 11:22:07 +01:00
parent 36a7cc5fe9
commit cb30faf15f
8 changed files with 257 additions and 13 deletions
+14
View File
@@ -315,6 +315,20 @@ pub fn userExit() noreturn {
user_exit_to_kernel();
}
/// The counter the syscall exit stub bumps when it refuses to return the fast way
/// (isr.s, `sysret_non_canonical_count`).
const non_canonical_returns = @extern(*u64, .{ .name = "sysret_non_canonical_count" });
/// How many times this boot's system_call returns took the slow, safe exit because
/// the return address was not a canonical address (the SYSRETQ canonical-RIP guard
/// in isr.s; an architecture without the hazard reports 0 forever). A correct
/// program cannot produce one — it could not have executed at a non-canonical
/// address in the first place — so a nonzero count is exactly the number of times
/// a process tried to make the kernel fault on its way out.
pub fn nonCanonicalReturnCount() u64 {
return @atomicLoad(u64, non_canonical_returns, .monotonic);
}
/// Register the handler for the user system_call gate (int 0x80, vector 128). The
/// handler may write the trap frame (see `setSystemCallResult`).
pub fn setSystemCallHandler(handler: *const fn (*CpuState) void) void {