--- /dev/null
+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+=====================
+Introduction of mseal
+=====================
+
+:Author: Jeff Xu <jeffxu@chromium.org>
+
+Modern CPUs support memory permissions such as RW and NX bits. The memory
+permission feature improves security stance on memory corruption bugs, i.e.
+the attacker can’t just write to arbitrary memory and point the code to it,
+the memory has to be marked with X bit, or else an exception will happen.
+
+Memory sealing additionally protects the mapping itself against
+modifications. This is useful to mitigate memory corruption issues where a
+corrupted pointer is passed to a memory management system. For example,
+such an attacker primitive can break control-flow integrity guarantees
+since read-only memory that is supposed to be trusted can become writable
+or .text pages can get remapped. Memory sealing can automatically be
+applied by the runtime loader to seal .text and .rodata pages and
+applications can additionally seal security critical data at runtime.
+
+A similar feature already exists in the XNU kernel with the
+VM_FLAGS_PERMANENT flag [1] and on OpenBSD with the mimmutable syscall [2].
+
+User API
+========
+mseal()
+-----------
+The mseal() syscall has the following signature:
+
+``int mseal(void addr, size_t len, unsigned long flags)``
+
+**addr/len**: virtual memory address range.
+
+The address range set by ``addr``/``len`` must meet:
+ - The start address must be in an allocated VMA.
+ - The start address must be page aligned.
+ - The end address (``addr`` + ``len``) must be in an allocated VMA.
+ - no gap (unallocated memory) between start and end address.
+
+The ``len`` will be paged aligned implicitly by the kernel.
+
+**flags**: reserved for future use.
+
+**return values**:
+
+- ``0``: Success.
+
+- ``-EINVAL``:
+ - Invalid input ``flags``.
+ - The start address (``addr``) is not page aligned.
+ - Address range (``addr`` + ``len``) overflow.
+
+- ``-ENOMEM``:
+ - The start address (``addr``) is not allocated.
+ - The end address (``addr`` + ``len``) is not allocated.
+ - A gap (unallocated memory) between start and end address.
+
+- ``-EPERM``:
+ - sealing is supported only on 64-bit CPUs, 32-bit is not supported.
+
+- For above error cases, users can expect the given memory range is
+ unmodified, i.e. no partial update.
+
+- There might be other internal errors/cases not listed here, e.g.
+ error during merging/splitting VMAs, or the process reaching the max
+ number of supported VMAs. In those cases, partial updates to the given
+ memory range could happen. However, those cases should be rare.
+
+**Blocked operations after sealing**:
+ Unmapping, moving to another location, and shrinking the size,
+ via munmap() and mremap(), can leave an empty space, therefore
+ can be replaced with a VMA with a new set of attributes.
+
+ Moving or expanding a different VMA into the current location,
+ via mremap().
+
+ Modifying a VMA via mmap(MAP_FIXED).
+
+ Size expansion, via mremap(), does not appear to pose any
+ specific risks to sealed VMAs. It is included anyway because
+ the use case is unclear. In any case, users can rely on
+ merging to expand a sealed VMA.
+
+ mprotect() and pkey_mprotect().
+
+ Some destructive madvice() behaviors (e.g. MADV_DONTNEED)
+ for anonymous memory, when users don't have write permission to the
+ memory. Those behaviors can alter region contents by discarding pages,
+ effectively a memset(0) for anonymous memory.
+
+ Kernel will return -EPERM for blocked operations.
+
+ For blocked operations, one can expect the given address is unmodified,
+ i.e. no partial update. Note, this is different from existing mm
+ system call behaviors, where partial updates are made till an error is
+ found and returned to userspace. To give an example:
+
+ Assume following code sequence:
+
+ - ptr = mmap(null, 8192, PROT_NONE);
+ - munmap(ptr + 4096, 4096);
+ - ret1 = mprotect(ptr, 8192, PROT_READ);
+ - mseal(ptr, 4096);
+ - ret2 = mprotect(ptr, 8192, PROT_NONE);
+
+ ret1 will be -ENOMEM, the page from ptr is updated to PROT_READ.
+
+ ret2 will be -EPERM, the page remains to be PROT_READ.
+
+**Note**:
+
+- mseal() only works on 64-bit CPUs, not 32-bit CPU.
+
+- users can call mseal() multiple times, mseal() on an already sealed memory
+ is a no-action (not error).
+
+- munseal() is not supported.
+
+Use cases:
+==========
+- glibc:
+ The dynamic linker, during loading ELF executables, can apply sealing to
+ non-writable memory segments.
+
+- Chrome browser: protect some security sensitive data-structures.
+
+Notes on which memory to seal:
+==============================
+
+It might be important to note that sealing changes the lifetime of a mapping,
+i.e. the sealed mapping won’t be unmapped till the process terminates or the
+exec system call is invoked. Applications can apply sealing to any virtual
+memory region from userspace, but it is crucial to thoroughly analyze the
+mapping's lifetime prior to apply the sealing.
+
+For example:
+
+- aio/shm
+
+ aio/shm can call mmap()/munmap() on behalf of userspace, e.g. ksys_shmdt() in
+ shm.c. The lifetime of those mapping are not tied to the lifetime of the
+ process. If those memories are sealed from userspace, then munmap() will fail,
+ causing leaks in VMA address space during the lifetime of the process.
+
+- Brk (heap)
+
+ Currently, userspace applications can seal parts of the heap by calling
+ malloc() and mseal().
+ let's assume following calls from user space:
+
+ - ptr = malloc(size);
+ - mprotect(ptr, size, RO);
+ - mseal(ptr, size);
+ - free(ptr);
+
+ Technically, before mseal() is added, the user can change the protection of
+ the heap by calling mprotect(RO). As long as the user changes the protection
+ back to RW before free(), the memory range can be reused.
+
+ Adding mseal() into the picture, however, the heap is then sealed partially,
+ the user can still free it, but the memory remains to be RO. If the address
+ is re-used by the heap manager for another malloc, the process might crash
+ soon after. Therefore, it is important not to apply sealing to any memory
+ that might get recycled.
+
+ Furthermore, even if the application never calls the free() for the ptr,
+ the heap manager may invoke the brk system call to shrink the size of the
+ heap. In the kernel, the brk-shrink will call munmap(). Consequently,
+ depending on the location of the ptr, the outcome of brk-shrink is
+ nondeterministic.
+
+
+Additional notes:
+=================
+As Jann Horn pointed out in [3], there are still a few ways to write
+to RO memory, which is, in a way, by design. Those cases are not covered
+by mseal(). If applications want to block such cases, sandbox tools (such as
+seccomp, LSM, etc) might be considered.
+
+Those cases are:
+
+- Write to read-only memory through /proc/self/mem interface.
+- Write to read-only memory through ptrace (such as PTRACE_POKETEXT).
+- userfaultfd.
+
+The idea that inspired this patch comes from Stephen Röttger’s work in V8
+CFI [4]. Chrome browser in ChromeOS will be the first user of this API.
+
+Reference:
+==========
+[1] https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu/blob/1031c584a5e37aff177559b9f69dbd3c8c3fd30a/osfmk/mach/vm_statistics.h#L274
+
+[2] https://man.openbsd.org/mimmutable.2
+
+[3] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAG48ez3ShUYey+ZAFsU2i1RpQn0a5eOs2hzQ426FkcgnfUGLvA@mail.gmail.com
+
+[4] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O2jwK4dxI3nRcOJuPYkonhTkNQfbmwdvxQMyXgeaRHo/edit#heading=h.bvaojj9fu6hc
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