GitLab

Without EXCLUSIVE_SYSTEM_RAM, users are allowed to map arbitrary
physical memory regions into the userspace via /dev/mem. At the same
time, pages may change their properties (e.g., from anonymous pages to
named pages) while they are still being mapped in the userspace, leading
to "corruption" detected by the page table check.

To avoid these false positives, this patch makes PAGE_TABLE_CHECK
depends on EXCLUSIVE_SYSTEM_RAM. This dependency is understandable
because PAGE_TABLE_CHECK is a hardening technique but /dev/mem without
STRICT_DEVMEM (i.e., !EXCLUSIVE_SYSTEM_RAM) is itself a security
problem.

Even with EXCLUSIVE_SYSTEM_RAM, I/O pages may be still allowed to be
mapped via /dev/mem. However, these pages are always considered as named
pages, so they won't break the logic used in the page table check.

Cc: <stable@vger.kernel.org> # 5.17
Signed-off-by: Ruihan Li <lrh2000@pku.edu.cn>
Acked-by: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
Acked-by:...