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Date:      Sat, 29 Jun 2002 15:13:58 -0700
From:      Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>
To:        arch@freebsd.org
Subject:   Time to make the stack non-executable?
Message-ID:  <3D1E3126.C96FFAA5@mindspring.com>
References:  <3D1E28ED.B67A5271@FreeBSD.org>

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Doug Barton wrote:
> Subject: We're famous
>http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=70&e=2&cid=70&u=/cn/20020629/tc_cn/940585


Sean Eric Fagan and I discussed this several years ago, and we
discussed it again the other day, before this attack hit.  It
looks like it's an idea whose time has come.

We've identified a number of issues that might make doing this
problematic, and on which there needs to be feedback:

o	Java; specifically, JITs may rely on an executable
	stack.  Neither of us knows if this is true, for
	sure.

o	FORTH?  Same question.

o	Signals

o	Julian's new threads patches

o	Multiple architecture support

Right now, SEF points out (and I concur) that the only portion
of the system that seems to care about having an executable stack
is the signal trampoline.  I would imagine that the trampoline
for the user space threads scheduler for KSE based threading will
(does) have the same problem.

For signals, this is easy: copy SVR4, and modify the signal
functions to pass in a return address, then disable the execute
bits on stack pages and see whose head blows up.

Frankly, I'm very surprised to discover that OpenBSD has not
already done this.

Opinions?  Patches from people who know and love the signals
facility on Alpha, SPARC64, PPC, etc.?

-- Terry

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