Re: Shadow stack backtrace command name

Luis Machado via Gdb
2023-12-20T15:58:20Z

Hi,

On 12/20/23 15:35, Schimpe, Christina wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Thanks a lot for your feedback. Please find my answers to your comments below.
>
>>> Having in mind that that the shadow stack is not only a x86-specific
>>> feature but can be seen as a generic concept we also considered that
>>> it could be part of the existing backtrace command, e.g.:
>>> - "bt -shadow"
>>> (+) Short syntax
>>> (+/-) Most of the settings of the bt command don't apply to the shadow
>>> stack (frame arguments and info). This might cause confusion.
>>>
>>> For this option, it might make sense to introduce a new setting for
>>> the bt command which is for shadow stack only, e.g. "-symbol-filename
>> [on|off]".
>>>
>>> What are your thoughts on this topic? Any feedback and new ideas are
>> welcome.
>>
>> I like the option of reusing whatever is possible to reuse from the current
>> backtrace command, so "bt -shadow" seems like a sensible option.
>>
>> It doesn't seem to me like this command will be used a lot. I expect it will be
>> useful only when we catch a fault due to a corrupt stack trace, so putting it within
>> the more general "backtrace" option would accomplish that.
>>
>> With that said, depending on how shadow stack support is implemented in gdb, I
>> expect gdb will automatically validate the stack trace against the shadow stack
>> (maybe on a fault), and complain if they go out of sync. Does that sound
>> reasonable? Maybe even display where the flow veered off course.
>
> No, we don't plan to validate the stack trace in GDB, as we don't see much
> additional value for the user.
> In case of a CET violation the user will see a SEGV with CP specific
> si_code = 10 (SEGV_CPERR). Printing siginfo will help to find out the reason for SEGV.
> Inspecting the shadow stack and normal bt will show where the traces got out of sync.

Thanks for clarifying it. My understanding is that aarch64 will also use SEGV_CPERR for
the GCS faults, so it will be in sync with CET regarding reporting.

>
>> AArch64 will have a counterpart of this, with the Guarded Control Stack (GCS)
>> feature, so the more generic we make this, the better.
>
> Would the option's name "-shadow" be suitable for the GCS? I find it difficult to come
> up with a more generic name that would cover both.

From this entry [1], looks like the term shadow stack is a reasonably generic way to refer
to this feature. So I think it is a suitable name, and would work for GCS as well.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_stack