This patch introduces a restriction on /dev/mem: Only non-memory can be
read or written unless the newly introduced config option is set.
The X server needs access to /dev/mem for the PCI space, but it doesn't need
access to memory; both the file permissions and SELinux permissions of /dev/mem
just make X effectively super-super powerful. With the exception of the
BIOS area, there's just no valid app that uses /dev/mem on actual memory.
Other popular users of /dev/mem are rootkits and the like.
(note: mmap access of memory via /dev/mem was already not allowed since
a really long time)
People who want to use /dev/mem for kernel debugging can enable the config
option.
The restrictions of this patch have been in the Fedora and RHEL kernels for
at least 4 years without any problems.
Signed-off-by: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
ae531c26c5