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authorSoham Bagchi <soham.bagchi@utah.edu>2025-07-28 12:43:17 -0600
committerAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>2025-09-13 17:32:44 -0700
commitc2fe368b6eb24af72708890b04e9a773c8465703 (patch)
treed5ec2413ef625f67d2aaa9079403a8734468dc47
parent06ef8b9aa25ea7342ffd604784edcfdbc8348920 (diff)
kcov: use write memory barrier after memcpy() in kcov_move_area()
KCOV Remote uses two separate memory buffers, one private to the kernel space (kcov_remote_areas) and the second one shared between user and kernel space (kcov->area). After every pair of kcov_remote_start() and kcov_remote_stop(), the coverage data collected in the kcov_remote_areas is copied to kcov->area so the user can read the collected coverage data. This memcpy() is located in kcov_move_area(). The load/store pattern on the kernel-side [1] is: ``` /* dst_area === kcov->area, dst_area[0] is where the count is stored */ dst_len = READ_ONCE(*(unsigned long *)dst_area); ... memcpy(dst_entries, src_entries, ...); ... WRITE_ONCE(*(unsigned long *)dst_area, dst_len + entries_moved); ``` And for the user [2]: ``` /* cover is equivalent to kcov->area */ n = __atomic_load_n(&cover[0], __ATOMIC_RELAXED); ``` Without a write-memory barrier, the atomic load for the user can potentially read fresh values of the count stored at cover[0], but continue to read stale coverage data from the buffer itself. Hence, we recommend adding a write-memory barrier between the memcpy() and the WRITE_ONCE() in kcov_move_area(). Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20250728184318.1839137-1-soham.bagchi@utah.edu Link: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/tree/kernel/kcov.c?h=master#n978 [1] Link: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/tree/Documentation/dev-tools/kcov.rst#n364 [2] Signed-off-by: Soham Bagchi <soham.bagchi@utah.edu> Reviewed-by: Marco Elver <elver@google.com> Cc: Alexander Potapenko <glider@google.com> Cc: Andrey Konovalov <andreyknvl@gmail.com> Cc: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de> Cc: Dmitriy Vyukov <dvyukov@google.com> Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net> Cc: Thomas Gleinxer <tglx@linutronix.de> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
-rw-r--r--kernel/kcov.c9
1 files changed, 9 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/kernel/kcov.c b/kernel/kcov.c
index 1d85597057e1..6563141f5de9 100644
--- a/kernel/kcov.c
+++ b/kernel/kcov.c
@@ -978,6 +978,15 @@ static void kcov_move_area(enum kcov_mode mode, void *dst_area,
memcpy(dst_entries, src_entries, bytes_to_move);
entries_moved = bytes_to_move >> entry_size_log;
+ /*
+ * A write memory barrier is required here, to ensure
+ * that the writes from the memcpy() are visible before
+ * the count is updated. Without this, it is possible for
+ * a user to observe a new count value but stale
+ * coverage data.
+ */
+ smp_wmb();
+
switch (mode) {
case KCOV_MODE_TRACE_PC:
WRITE_ONCE(*(unsigned long *)dst_area, dst_len + entries_moved);