1 The Kernel Address Sanitizer (KASAN)
2 ====================================
7 KernelAddressSANitizer (KASAN) is a dynamic memory safety error detector
8 designed to find out-of-bound and use-after-free bugs. KASAN has three modes:
10 1. generic KASAN (similar to userspace ASan),
11 2. software tag-based KASAN (similar to userspace HWASan),
12 3. hardware tag-based KASAN (based on hardware memory tagging).
14 Software KASAN modes (1 and 2) use compile-time instrumentation to insert
15 validity checks before every memory access, and therefore require a compiler
16 version that supports that.
18 Generic KASAN is supported in both GCC and Clang. With GCC it requires version
19 8.3.0 or later. Any supported Clang version is compatible, but detection of
20 out-of-bounds accesses for global variables is only supported since Clang 11.
22 Tag-based KASAN is only supported in Clang.
24 Currently generic KASAN is supported for the x86_64, arm, arm64, xtensa, s390
25 and riscv architectures, and tag-based KASAN modes are supported only for arm64.
30 To enable KASAN configure kernel with::
34 and choose between CONFIG_KASAN_GENERIC (to enable generic KASAN),
35 CONFIG_KASAN_SW_TAGS (to enable software tag-based KASAN), and
36 CONFIG_KASAN_HW_TAGS (to enable hardware tag-based KASAN).
38 For software modes, you also need to choose between CONFIG_KASAN_OUTLINE and
39 CONFIG_KASAN_INLINE. Outline and inline are compiler instrumentation types.
40 The former produces smaller binary while the latter is 1.1 - 2 times faster.
42 Both software KASAN modes work with both SLUB and SLAB memory allocators,
43 while the hardware tag-based KASAN currently only support SLUB.
45 For better error reports that include stack traces, enable CONFIG_STACKTRACE.
47 To augment reports with last allocation and freeing stack of the physical page,
48 it is recommended to enable also CONFIG_PAGE_OWNER and boot with page_owner=on.
53 A typical out-of-bounds access generic KASAN report looks like this::
55 ==================================================================
56 BUG: KASAN: slab-out-of-bounds in kmalloc_oob_right+0xa8/0xbc [test_kasan]
57 Write of size 1 at addr ffff8801f44ec37b by task insmod/2760
59 CPU: 1 PID: 2760 Comm: insmod Not tainted 4.19.0-rc3+ #698
60 Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS 1.10.2-1 04/01/2014
63 print_address_description+0x73/0x280
64 kasan_report+0x144/0x187
65 __asan_report_store1_noabort+0x17/0x20
66 kmalloc_oob_right+0xa8/0xbc [test_kasan]
67 kmalloc_tests_init+0x16/0x700 [test_kasan]
68 do_one_initcall+0xa5/0x3ae
69 do_init_module+0x1b6/0x547
70 load_module+0x75df/0x8070
71 __do_sys_init_module+0x1c6/0x200
72 __x64_sys_init_module+0x6e/0xb0
73 do_syscall_64+0x9f/0x2c0
74 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x44/0xa9
75 RIP: 0033:0x7f96443109da
76 RSP: 002b:00007ffcf0b51b08 EFLAGS: 00000202 ORIG_RAX: 00000000000000af
77 RAX: ffffffffffffffda RBX: 000055dc3ee521a0 RCX: 00007f96443109da
78 RDX: 00007f96445cff88 RSI: 0000000000057a50 RDI: 00007f9644992000
79 RBP: 000055dc3ee510b0 R08: 0000000000000003 R09: 0000000000000000
80 R10: 00007f964430cd0a R11: 0000000000000202 R12: 00007f96445cff88
81 R13: 000055dc3ee51090 R14: 0000000000000000 R15: 0000000000000000
83 Allocated by task 2760:
85 kasan_kmalloc+0xa7/0xd0
86 kmem_cache_alloc_trace+0xe1/0x1b0
87 kmalloc_oob_right+0x56/0xbc [test_kasan]
88 kmalloc_tests_init+0x16/0x700 [test_kasan]
89 do_one_initcall+0xa5/0x3ae
90 do_init_module+0x1b6/0x547
91 load_module+0x75df/0x8070
92 __do_sys_init_module+0x1c6/0x200
93 __x64_sys_init_module+0x6e/0xb0
94 do_syscall_64+0x9f/0x2c0
95 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x44/0xa9
99 __kasan_slab_free+0x135/0x190
100 kasan_slab_free+0xe/0x10
102 umh_complete+0x6a/0xa0
103 call_usermodehelper_exec_async+0x4c3/0x640
104 ret_from_fork+0x35/0x40
106 The buggy address belongs to the object at ffff8801f44ec300
107 which belongs to the cache kmalloc-128 of size 128
108 The buggy address is located 123 bytes inside of
109 128-byte region [ffff8801f44ec300, ffff8801f44ec380)
110 The buggy address belongs to the page:
111 page:ffffea0007d13b00 count:1 mapcount:0 mapping:ffff8801f7001640 index:0x0
112 flags: 0x200000000000100(slab)
113 raw: 0200000000000100 ffffea0007d11dc0 0000001a0000001a ffff8801f7001640
114 raw: 0000000000000000 0000000080150015 00000001ffffffff 0000000000000000
115 page dumped because: kasan: bad access detected
117 Memory state around the buggy address:
118 ffff8801f44ec200: fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb
119 ffff8801f44ec280: fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc
120 >ffff8801f44ec300: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 03
122 ffff8801f44ec380: fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb
123 ffff8801f44ec400: fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc
124 ==================================================================
126 The header of the report provides a short summary of what kind of bug happened
127 and what kind of access caused it. It's followed by a stack trace of the bad
128 access, a stack trace of where the accessed memory was allocated (in case bad
129 access happens on a slab object), and a stack trace of where the object was
130 freed (in case of a use-after-free bug report). Next comes a description of
131 the accessed slab object and information about the accessed memory page.
133 In the last section the report shows memory state around the accessed address.
134 Internally KASAN tracks memory state separately for each memory granule, which
135 is either 8 or 16 aligned bytes depending on KASAN mode. Each number in the
136 memory state section of the report shows the state of one of the memory
137 granules that surround the accessed address.
139 For generic KASAN the size of each memory granule is 8. The state of each
140 granule is encoded in one shadow byte. Those 8 bytes can be accessible,
141 partially accessible, freed or be a part of a redzone. KASAN uses the following
142 encoding for each shadow byte: 0 means that all 8 bytes of the corresponding
143 memory region are accessible; number N (1 <= N <= 7) means that the first N
144 bytes are accessible, and other (8 - N) bytes are not; any negative value
145 indicates that the entire 8-byte word is inaccessible. KASAN uses different
146 negative values to distinguish between different kinds of inaccessible memory
147 like redzones or freed memory (see mm/kasan/kasan.h).
149 In the report above the arrows point to the shadow byte 03, which means that
150 the accessed address is partially accessible.
152 For tag-based KASAN this last report section shows the memory tags around the
153 accessed address (see `Implementation details`_ section).
158 Hardware tag-based KASAN mode (see the section about different mode below) is
159 intended for use in production as a security mitigation. Therefore it supports
160 boot parameters that allow to disable KASAN competely or otherwise control
161 particular KASAN features.
163 The things that can be controlled are:
165 1. Whether KASAN is enabled at all.
166 2. Whether KASAN collects and saves alloc/free stacks.
167 3. Whether KASAN panics on a detected bug or not.
169 The ``kasan.mode`` boot parameter allows to choose one of three main modes:
171 - ``kasan.mode=off`` - KASAN is disabled, no tag checks are performed
172 - ``kasan.mode=prod`` - only essential production features are enabled
173 - ``kasan.mode=full`` - all KASAN features are enabled
175 The chosen mode provides default control values for the features mentioned
176 above. However it's also possible to override the default values by providing:
178 - ``kasan.stacktrace=off`` or ``=on`` - enable alloc/free stack collection
179 (default: ``on`` for ``mode=full``,
181 - ``kasan.fault=report`` or ``=panic`` - only print KASAN report or also panic
182 (default: ``report``)
184 If ``kasan.mode`` parameter is not provided, it defaults to ``full`` when
185 ``CONFIG_DEBUG_KERNEL`` is enabled, and to ``prod`` otherwise.
190 Software KASAN modes use compiler instrumentation to insert validity checks.
191 Such instrumentation might be incompatible with some part of the kernel, and
192 therefore needs to be disabled. To disable instrumentation for specific files
193 or directories, add a line similar to the following to the respective kernel
196 - For a single file (e.g. main.o)::
198 KASAN_SANITIZE_main.o := n
200 - For all files in one directory::
205 Implementation details
206 ----------------------
211 From a high level perspective, KASAN's approach to memory error detection is
212 similar to that of kmemcheck: use shadow memory to record whether each byte of
213 memory is safe to access, and use compile-time instrumentation to insert checks
214 of shadow memory on each memory access.
216 Generic KASAN dedicates 1/8th of kernel memory to its shadow memory (e.g. 16TB
217 to cover 128TB on x86_64) and uses direct mapping with a scale and offset to
218 translate a memory address to its corresponding shadow address.
220 Here is the function which translates an address to its corresponding shadow
223 static inline void *kasan_mem_to_shadow(const void *addr)
225 return ((unsigned long)addr >> KASAN_SHADOW_SCALE_SHIFT)
226 + KASAN_SHADOW_OFFSET;
229 where ``KASAN_SHADOW_SCALE_SHIFT = 3``.
231 Compile-time instrumentation is used to insert memory access checks. Compiler
232 inserts function calls (__asan_load*(addr), __asan_store*(addr)) before each
233 memory access of size 1, 2, 4, 8 or 16. These functions check whether memory
234 access is valid or not by checking corresponding shadow memory.
236 GCC 5.0 has possibility to perform inline instrumentation. Instead of making
237 function calls GCC directly inserts the code to check the shadow memory.
238 This option significantly enlarges kernel but it gives x1.1-x2 performance
239 boost over outline instrumented kernel.
241 Generic KASAN also reports the last 2 call stacks to creation of work that
242 potentially has access to an object. Call stacks for the following are shown:
243 call_rcu() and workqueue queuing.
245 Generic KASAN is the only mode that delays the reuse of freed object via
246 quarantine (see mm/kasan/quarantine.c for implementation).
248 Software tag-based KASAN
249 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
251 Software tag-based KASAN requires software memory tagging support in the form
252 of HWASan-like compiler instrumentation (see HWASan documentation for details).
254 Software tag-based KASAN is currently only implemented for arm64 architecture.
256 Software tag-based KASAN uses the Top Byte Ignore (TBI) feature of arm64 CPUs
257 to store a pointer tag in the top byte of kernel pointers. Like generic KASAN
258 it uses shadow memory to store memory tags associated with each 16-byte memory
259 cell (therefore it dedicates 1/16th of the kernel memory for shadow memory).
261 On each memory allocation software tag-based KASAN generates a random tag, tags
262 the allocated memory with this tag, and embeds this tag into the returned
265 Software tag-based KASAN uses compile-time instrumentation to insert checks
266 before each memory access. These checks make sure that tag of the memory that
267 is being accessed is equal to tag of the pointer that is used to access this
268 memory. In case of a tag mismatch software tag-based KASAN prints a bug report.
270 Software tag-based KASAN also has two instrumentation modes (outline, that
271 emits callbacks to check memory accesses; and inline, that performs the shadow
272 memory checks inline). With outline instrumentation mode, a bug report is
273 simply printed from the function that performs the access check. With inline
274 instrumentation a brk instruction is emitted by the compiler, and a dedicated
275 brk handler is used to print bug reports.
277 Software tag-based KASAN uses 0xFF as a match-all pointer tag (accesses through
278 pointers with 0xFF pointer tag aren't checked). The value 0xFE is currently
279 reserved to tag freed memory regions.
281 Software tag-based KASAN currently only supports tagging of
282 kmem_cache_alloc/kmalloc and page_alloc memory.
284 Hardware tag-based KASAN
285 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
287 Hardware tag-based KASAN is similar to the software mode in concept, but uses
288 hardware memory tagging support instead of compiler instrumentation and
291 Hardware tag-based KASAN is currently only implemented for arm64 architecture
292 and based on both arm64 Memory Tagging Extension (MTE) introduced in ARMv8.5
293 Instruction Set Architecture, and Top Byte Ignore (TBI).
295 Special arm64 instructions are used to assign memory tags for each allocation.
296 Same tags are assigned to pointers to those allocations. On every memory
297 access, hardware makes sure that tag of the memory that is being accessed is
298 equal to tag of the pointer that is used to access this memory. In case of a
299 tag mismatch a fault is generated and a report is printed.
301 Hardware tag-based KASAN uses 0xFF as a match-all pointer tag (accesses through
302 pointers with 0xFF pointer tag aren't checked). The value 0xFE is currently
303 reserved to tag freed memory regions.
305 Hardware tag-based KASAN currently only supports tagging of
306 kmem_cache_alloc/kmalloc and page_alloc memory.
308 What memory accesses are sanitised by KASAN?
309 --------------------------------------------
311 The kernel maps memory in a number of different parts of the address
312 space. This poses something of a problem for KASAN, which requires
313 that all addresses accessed by instrumented code have a valid shadow
316 The range of kernel virtual addresses is large: there is not enough
317 real memory to support a real shadow region for every address that
318 could be accessed by the kernel.
323 By default, architectures only map real memory over the shadow region
324 for the linear mapping (and potentially other small areas). For all
325 other areas - such as vmalloc and vmemmap space - a single read-only
326 page is mapped over the shadow area. This read-only shadow page
327 declares all memory accesses as permitted.
329 This presents a problem for modules: they do not live in the linear
330 mapping, but in a dedicated module space. By hooking in to the module
331 allocator, KASAN can temporarily map real shadow memory to cover
332 them. This allows detection of invalid accesses to module globals, for
335 This also creates an incompatibility with ``VMAP_STACK``: if the stack
336 lives in vmalloc space, it will be shadowed by the read-only page, and
337 the kernel will fault when trying to set up the shadow data for stack
343 With ``CONFIG_KASAN_VMALLOC``, KASAN can cover vmalloc space at the
344 cost of greater memory usage. Currently this is only supported on x86.
346 This works by hooking into vmalloc and vmap, and dynamically
347 allocating real shadow memory to back the mappings.
349 Most mappings in vmalloc space are small, requiring less than a full
350 page of shadow space. Allocating a full shadow page per mapping would
351 therefore be wasteful. Furthermore, to ensure that different mappings
352 use different shadow pages, mappings would have to be aligned to
353 ``KASAN_GRANULE_SIZE * PAGE_SIZE``.
355 Instead, KASAN shares backing space across multiple mappings. It allocates
356 a backing page when a mapping in vmalloc space uses a particular page
357 of the shadow region. This page can be shared by other vmalloc
360 KASAN hooks into the vmap infrastructure to lazily clean up unused shadow
363 To avoid the difficulties around swapping mappings around, KASAN expects
364 that the part of the shadow region that covers the vmalloc space will
365 not be covered by the early shadow page, but will be left
366 unmapped. This will require changes in arch-specific code.
368 This allows ``VMAP_STACK`` support on x86, and can simplify support of
369 architectures that do not have a fixed module region.
371 CONFIG_KASAN_KUNIT_TEST & CONFIG_TEST_KASAN_MODULE
372 --------------------------------------------------
374 KASAN tests consist on two parts:
376 1. Tests that are integrated with the KUnit Test Framework. Enabled with
377 ``CONFIG_KASAN_KUNIT_TEST``. These tests can be run and partially verified
378 automatically in a few different ways, see the instructions below.
380 2. Tests that are currently incompatible with KUnit. Enabled with
381 ``CONFIG_TEST_KASAN_MODULE`` and can only be run as a module. These tests can
382 only be verified manually, by loading the kernel module and inspecting the
383 kernel log for KASAN reports.
385 Each KUnit-compatible KASAN test prints a KASAN report if an error is detected.
386 Then the test prints its number and status.
390 ok 28 - kmalloc_double_kzfree
392 When a test fails due to a failed ``kmalloc``::
394 # kmalloc_large_oob_right: ASSERTION FAILED at lib/test_kasan.c:163
395 Expected ptr is not null, but is
396 not ok 4 - kmalloc_large_oob_right
398 When a test fails due to a missing KASAN report::
400 # kmalloc_double_kzfree: EXPECTATION FAILED at lib/test_kasan.c:629
401 Expected kasan_data->report_expected == kasan_data->report_found, but
402 kasan_data->report_expected == 1
403 kasan_data->report_found == 0
404 not ok 28 - kmalloc_double_kzfree
406 At the end the cumulative status of all KASAN tests is printed. On success::
410 Or, if one of the tests failed::
415 There are a few ways to run KUnit-compatible KASAN tests.
420 With ``CONFIG_KUNIT`` enabled, ``CONFIG_KASAN_KUNIT_TEST`` can be built as
421 a loadable module and run on any architecture that supports KASAN by loading
422 the module with insmod or modprobe. The module is called ``test_kasan``.
427 With ``CONFIG_KUNIT`` built-in, ``CONFIG_KASAN_KUNIT_TEST`` can be built-in
428 on any architecure that supports KASAN. These and any other KUnit tests enabled
429 will run and print the results at boot as a late-init call.
434 With ``CONFIG_KUNIT`` and ``CONFIG_KASAN_KUNIT_TEST`` built-in, it's also
435 possible use ``kunit_tool`` to see the results of these and other KUnit tests
436 in a more readable way. This will not print the KASAN reports of the tests that
437 passed. Use `KUnit documentation <https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/dev-tools/kunit/index.html>`_
438 for more up-to-date information on ``kunit_tool``.
440 .. _KUnit: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/dev-tools/kunit/index.html