mm: allow slab_nomerge to be set at build time

Some hardened environments want to build kernels with slab_nomerge
already set (so that they do not depend on remembering to set the kernel
command line option).  This is desired to reduce the risk of kernel heap
overflows being able to overwrite objects from merged caches and changes
the requirements for cache layout control, increasing the difficulty of
these attacks.  By keeping caches unmerged, these kinds of exploits can
usually only damage objects in the same cache (though the risk to
metadata exploitation is unchanged).

Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20170620230911.GA25238@beast
Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Cc: Daniel Micay <danielmicay@gmail.com>
Cc: David Windsor <dave@nullcore.net>
Cc: Eric Biggers <ebiggers3@gmail.com>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux.com>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: Daniel Micay <danielmicay@gmail.com>
Cc: David Windsor <dave@nullcore.net>
Cc: Eric Biggers <ebiggers3@gmail.com>
Cc: Pekka Enberg <penberg@kernel.org>
Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com>
Cc: "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
Cc: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@kernel.org>
Cc: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
Cc: Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org>
Cc: Nicolas Pitre <nicolas.pitre@linaro.org>
Cc: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
Cc: Daniel Mack <daniel@zonque.org>
Cc: Sebastian Andrzej Siewior <bigeasy@linutronix.de>
Cc: Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>
Cc: Helge Deller <deller@gmx.de>
Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Cc: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 2 insertions, 3 deletions

diff --git a/mm/slab_common.c b/mm/slab_common.c
index 01a0fe2eb332..904a83be82de 100644
--- a/mm/slab_common.c
+++ b/mm/slab_common.c
@@ -47,13 +47,12 @@ static DECLARE_WORK(slab_caches_to_rcu_destroy_work,
 
 /*
  * Merge control. If this is set then no merging of slab caches will occur.
- * (Could be removed. This was introduced to pacify the merge skeptics.)
  */
-static int slab_nomerge;
+static bool slab_nomerge = !IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_SLAB_MERGE_DEFAULT);
 
 static int __init setup_slab_nomerge(char *str)
 {
-	slab_nomerge = 1;
+	slab_nomerge = true;
 	return 1;
 }