memfd_secret(2) — Linux manual page

NAME | LIBRARY | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | STANDARDS | HISTORY | NOTES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

memfd_secret(2)            System Calls Manual           memfd_secret(2)

NAME         top

       memfd_secret - create an anonymous RAM-based file to access
       secret memory regions

LIBRARY         top

       Standard C library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <sys/syscall.h>      /* Definition of SYS_* constants */
       #include <unistd.h>

       int syscall(SYS_memfd_secret, unsigned int flags);

       Note: glibc provides no wrapper for memfd_secret(), necessitating
       the use of syscall(2).

DESCRIPTION         top

       memfd_secret() creates an anonymous RAM-based file and returns a
       file descriptor that refers to it.  The file provides a way to
       create and access memory regions with stronger protection than
       usual RAM-based files and anonymous memory mappings.  Once all
       open references to the file are closed, it is automatically
       released.  The initial size of the file is set to 0.  Following
       the call, the file size should be set using ftruncate(2).

       The memory areas backing the file created with memfd_secret(2)
       are visible only to the processes that have access to the file
       descriptor.  The memory region is removed from the kernel page
       tables and only the page tables of the processes holding the file
       descriptor map the corresponding physical memory.  (Thus, the
       pages in the region can't be accessed by the kernel itself, so
       that, for example, pointers to the region can't be passed to
       system calls.)

       The following values may be bitwise ORed in flags to control the
       behavior of memfd_secret():

       FD_CLOEXEC
              Set the close-on-exec flag on the new file descriptor,
              which causes the region to be removed from the process on
              execve(2).  See the description of the O_CLOEXEC flag in
              open(2)

       As its return value, memfd_secret() returns a new file descriptor
       that refers to an anonymous file.  This file descriptor is opened
       for both reading and writing (O_RDWR) and O_LARGEFILE is set for
       the file descriptor.

       With respect to fork(2) and execve(2), the usual semantics apply
       for the file descriptor created by memfd_secret().  A copy of the
       file descriptor is inherited by the child produced by fork(2) and
       refers to the same file.  The file descriptor is preserved across
       execve(2), unless the close-on-exec flag has been set.

       The memory region is locked into memory in the same way as with
       mlock(2), so that it will never be written into swap, and
       hibernation is inhibited for as long as any memfd_secret()
       descriptions exist.  However the implementation of memfd_secret()
       will not try to populate the whole range during the mmap(2) call
       that attaches the region into the process's address space;
       instead, the pages are only actually allocated as they are
       faulted in.  The amount of memory allowed for memory mappings of
       the file descriptor obeys the same rules as mlock(2) and cannot
       exceed RLIMIT_MEMLOCK.

RETURN VALUE         top

       On success, memfd_secret() returns a new file descriptor.  On
       error, -1 is returned and errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS         top

       EINVAL flags included unknown bits.

       EMFILE The per-process limit on the number of open file
              descriptors has been reached.

       EMFILE The system-wide limit on the total number of open files
              has been reached.

       ENOMEM There was insufficient memory to create a new anonymous
              file.

       ENOSYS memfd_secret() is not implemented on this architecture, or
              has not been enabled on the kernel command-line with
              secretmem_enable=1.

STANDARDS         top

       Linux.

HISTORY         top

       Linux 5.14.

NOTES         top

       The memfd_secret() system call is designed to allow a user-space
       process to create a range of memory that is inaccessible to
       anybody else - kernel included.  There is no 100% guarantee that
       kernel won't be able to access memory ranges backed by
       memfd_secret() in any circumstances, but nevertheless, it is much
       harder to exfiltrate data from these regions.

       memfd_secret() provides the following protections:

       •  Enhanced protection (in conjunction with all the other in-
          kernel attack prevention systems) against ROP attacks.
          Absence of any in-kernel primitive for accessing memory backed
          by memfd_secret() means that one-gadget ROP attack can't work
          to perform data exfiltration.  The attacker would need to find
          enough ROP gadgets to reconstruct the missing page table
          entries, which significantly increases difficulty of the
          attack, especially when other protections like the kernel
          stack size limit and address space layout randomization are in
          place.

       •  Prevent cross-process user-space memory exposures.  Once a
          region for a memfd_secret() memory mapping is allocated, the
          user can't accidentally pass it into the kernel to be
          transmitted somewhere.  The memory pages in this region cannot
          be accessed via the direct map and they are disallowed in
          get_user_pages.

       •  Harden against exploited kernel flaws.  In order to access
          memory areas backed by memfd_secret(), a kernel-side attack
          would need to either walk the page tables and create new ones,
          or spawn a new privileged user-space process to perform
          secrets exfiltration using ptrace(2).

       The way memfd_secret() allocates and locks the memory may impact
       overall system performance, therefore the system call is disabled
       by default and only available if the system administrator turned
       it on using "secretmem.enable=y" kernel parameter.

       To prevent potential data leaks of memory regions backed by
       memfd_secret() from a hybernation image, hybernation is prevented
       when there are active memfd_secret() users.

SEE ALSO         top

       fcntl(2), ftruncate(2), mlock(2), memfd_create(2), mmap(2),
       setrlimit(2)

COLOPHON         top

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Linux man-pages 6.9.1          2024-05-02                memfd_secret(2)

Pages that refer to this page: madvise(2)memfd_create(2)memfd_secret(2)syscalls(2)